


Be Still, My Love, Be Still

by entanglednow



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Bookshop Fire, Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley is Bad at Being a Demon (Good Omens), Dubious Consent, Explicit Sexual Content, Falling In Love, First Kiss, First Time, Gratuitous Descriptions Of Crowley's Hair, Insomnia, Jealousy, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Possessive Crowley (Good Omens), Relationship Obstacles, Sleep Paralysis, Unable To Move, discussions of consent, negotiation, past trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:01:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 27,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23871301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entanglednow/pseuds/entanglednow
Summary: In which a lonely bookshop owner, and a lonely sleep paralysis demon fall in love, and try to make it work, in the brief snatches of time they can be together.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 1044
Kudos: 1841
Collections: Aziraphale/Crowley Non Human AUs, Best Aziraphale and Crowley, Bittersweet Good Omens, Ixnael’s Recommendations





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for an amazing piece of [NSFW art](https://imgur.com/a/AcAoXGA) done by a very talented anonymous artist (which is technically a spoiler for the last chapter.) Originally done for a 'Crowley is a sleep paralysis demon,' prompt, but I couldn't resist writing something for it. I did also say I was going to write an AU at some point, so I decided to go all-in.

It starts with a book.

It's part of a much larger collection, that Aziraphale purchases from an estate sale in Oxford. He's been steadily working his way through it, removing any volumes that were worth repairing and adding to his collection. Setting aside any that he has little interest in, but might do for the more modern shelves by the door, that the less demanding readers sometimes like to browse.

One of the books is not like the rest. It's more than a hundred years old, bound in black leather that's soft and worn in places, as if it's been opened and shut many times. To the point that there are cracks and splits on the spine, pages visible between them. There's a stain on the back too, splashing outwards in a faded burgundy, as if red wine had been spilled across it. Aziraphale carefully lets it fall open. He's not expecting much, a journal perhaps, or possibly a rebinding of some much-loved, small poetry collection. But what he finds instead is a series of delicate, unlined pages, covered in sketches and line drawings of plants and flowers. Hundreds of them, scratched in pencil, in ink, in biro, a few in the much thicker lines from a felt tip pen. They're lovely. Done with a clearly unpractised hand, but by someone who'd paid attention, who'd been familiar with every part of what they were drawing.

The only word in the whole book is scratched into the inside of the cover, where soft leather becomes compressed paper, _'Crowley'_.

Aziraphale's still considering what to do with it when a stack of books he'd been meaning to go through next somehow crashes its way to the floor beside him, startling him into dropping the small book back into its box.

-

The bookshop has only been open again for a few months.

Though it's already been over half a year since the fire almost destroyed the life Aziraphale had made for himself. Since it burned its devastating way through half his collection. Old wiring in the wall, they'd said, not built to cope with the demands of the modern age. Aziraphale doesn't remember much of the detailed explanation he'd been given, though he'd read it on numerous insurance forms, and repeated it over the phone to more anonymous, uncaring voices than he could remember. He'd completed every step of the claim with the numb expectation that at the end of it all everything would somehow be better. Not that the money had mattered. He could have had the repairs done without any financial assistance if he'd needed to. But it was what you were supposed to do, wasn't it? You were supposed to go through the motions. 

It's been a lot of work, but the wall had been rebuilt, the water damage seen to, the wiring redone, the tall shelves replaced with new ones that matched as close as possible to the originals, but still smell like freshly varnished wood. Aziraphale had dutifully filled them with all the books that had survived, and all the books he'd had in storage. Though it still wasn't enough, there are still gaps where dozens of books are missing, gaps that he tries his best to fill with antique clocks, and globes and book ends. Everything looks almost the same as it did.

Almost the same, and nothing the same.

He hasn't slept well since.

Every time he retires to his rooms upstairs he'll lay in bed for hours, tense with the certainty that if he falls asleep something terrible will happen. That some of the new wiring in the walls will prove itself to be faulty, catch light and burn its way through, taking everything this time, him included. He'll think he smells the bright scent of burning paper, just a hint of it on the air, not enough to be sure, but enough that his pulse will jump and stutter, forcing him to rise from the bed and make a circuit of the shop. Checking every room, every socket, every light switch for charring. Until he's too awake to consider going back to bed, and he'll simply drink tea until morning, occasionally opening a book to attempt to escape into it.

Though Aziraphale rarely manages it these days.

-

The books from the estate sale remain on the various tables a few days longer. Aziraphale's bursts of productivity are not quite as productive as they used to be, and the skin on his left arm is still a touch stiff, where he'd burnt himself trying to save a collection of Oscar Wilde first editions. The loss of which still hurt terribly. He's been slowly rebuilding his collection, slowly replacing the irreplaceable, but some things he can't bear to think about yet.

Still, he tells himself that he's getting better, getting back to normal, forcing himself to behave as if everything is fine, at least until the rest of him believes it. It had been working well enough so far.

Or at least he'd thought it was.

He'd thought his nerves were re-learning how not to live on high alert all the time. But he can't help but think that for the last week or so the shop had felt different. The faint hint of burning, that he'd been assured by his friend, Anathema, was simply his own mind playing tricks on him, still hangs in the air. Only the scent has changed slightly, it has a sharper, heavier, almost metallic hint to it now. One that he can't help but worry is old wiring that they'd missed burning in the walls. Books now refuse to stay on their shelves, and he keeps finding ones that he'd been certain he put away open on the small tables. The floorboards creak through the night in ways they didn't before, and there's a restless, unhappy sort of air to the place. One that he suspects is not simply his own feelings reflected back at him.

And then there's the noise that starts up at night, while he's lying in his bed trying desperately to sleep. A noise that wasn't there before. A low, dragging, slithering noise as if many small fingers were trailing the shelves downstairs. He's checked, he's checked so many times he's worn thin with it. But there's never anything there.

It might all have been far more disturbing, if Aziraphale wasn't so tired, if he wasn't so busy trying to catalogue and refill the shelves, if he wasn't so terribly lonely.

He eventually decides that a ghost suddenly choosing to haunt his bookshop is the least of his problems right now.

-

It takes another week for anything to really happen, just long enough that Aziraphale has written the whole thing off as his imagination, or as a reaction to the building work that had stripped out most of one wall, or simply as his own nervous exhaustion. It's understandable that things wouldn't feel the same, and it's silly of him to expect them to. Of course it's going to take time.

Until he wakes to the darkness of his bedroom, the crooked lenses of his glasses still on his face. The echoes of sleep are still nudging at him in a way that feels a bit like melting. The fact that he must have been asleep barely an hour is painfully frustrating. He'd hoped for more than that. A good night's sleep has been elusive for months now. He's really quite exhausted.

Only something is wrong.

It takes him a second of blinking into the darkness, before he realises abruptly that he can't move. He's awake, he's quite obviously awake. Because, though you can never be entirely sure if you're dreaming, you always know when you're awake. The real world has a certain clarity to it that dreams can't fake. He's most definitely awake, and yet he _cannot move_. His body utterly refuses to react to any of his attempts to shift a limb, or turn his head, or even tense. It simply exists, outside of his control, heavy and limp, as if it remains asleep, or dead, even as his brain works tirelessly to wake it.

Which is a singularly odd sensation.

He can look around the room from the angle he'd fallen asleep in. He can see the book he'd been reading, still splayed open across his chest, rather shoddy treatment for a book, that he doesn't think he'd have stood for before the fire. He can see the crack of light beneath the bedroom door, the heavy shape of the curtains over the small window. Everything else is darkness - no, not quite, there's a shape in the corner of the room, a slender stretch of form in the dark, that could be a person, or could just as easily be a badly hung dressing gown. Aziraphale stares at it, marvelling at how a mind can find faces and bodies in everything. 

At first, he's more curious than alarmed by his inability to move. His whole body feels impossibly heavy, as if it might sink through the mattress entirely. Though it's not currently an especially disturbing feeling, and his attempts to rouse himself to action are cursory at best. But it does suddenly occur to him that should be smell burning at this particular moment, he would be helpless, and the thought is enough for his heartbeat to jump into action, to make him press harder, to struggle to break the hold on his limbs. To see if he could -

The badly hung dressing gown sways suddenly, a gentle back and forth motion, as if it had shifted position, the top of it canting sideways a fraction, and it looks remarkably like someone tipping their head to see him better.

Aziraphale stops fighting immediately. He feels the prickle of goosebumps lifting across his suddenly cold skin, the crawl of unease that tells him that it most definitely isn't a badly hung dressing gown. The idea of a supernatural menace goes from ludicrous nonsense to unsettling possibility with lightning speed.

The presence is in his room, and he cannot move.

He can do nothing but stare into the dark, trying to discern features or form. But it's only half in his line of sight, tucked into the shadowy corner, resisting all attempts to view it clearly. It's simply a long, narrow shape that seems to be draped in some sort of gently moving fabric. It comes no closer, makes no threatening moves. It seems to just be watching him. 

It does it for long enough that Aziraphale starts to doubt his eyes again, to convince himself that it was nothing, a breeze, a trick of his overactive mind - but another slow tip of what's clearly now a head quickly disabuses him of that notion. 

It seems almost more curious than threatening.

'Did you come with the books?' Aziraphale wants to ask, and finds it wakes something like amusement in his head, rudely breaking whatever nervous energy may have been crawling inside his disobedient body. It leaves nothing in its wake but a desperate tiredness. He supposes it's a job lot for a reason, isn't it? You never know what you're going to get. Three hundred and fifty seven books, and a ghost. How rude of him to just lie here, he should introduce himself.

He thinks he may be smiling.

But he's pulled back into sleep before he can tell for sure.

-

When he wakes in the morning he does a good job of convincing himself that he'd imagined the whole thing. That the stress, and an unexpected bout of sleep paralysis had caused his imagination to throw up something that it thought would scare him. But luckily he'd been too tired and too addled to fall for it.

He might have even believed that as well. If the strange occurrences hadn't increased markedly. He'd find books in the wrong places entirely, globes gently spinning when he enters a room, mugs full of tea, or cocoa, would grow cold, or reheat at random. Doors would open and shut for no reason, and twice a random customer had complained of an 'unwelcoming air' to the place. The slow, slithering sound has increased as well, and could be heard on the stairs, the backroom, and in the small kitchen area as well now. As if the presence flatly refuses to let Aziraphale put its appearance in his room down to a trick of the light.

Eventually, after spending a week at something of a loss as to what he's supposed to, he decides that if the bookshop is to have a new occupant then he might as well introduce himself.

He takes his cup of tea into the main shop just after it closes, having evicted every last customer from between the shelves. Then he clears his throat, and it sounds so blatantly like he's preparing himself for a speech that he can't help but feel suddenly very awkward - though he supposes, best case scenario, there's no one around to care. 

"I don't know if you have a name, but my name is Aziraphale Fell. Though you probably know that already. Mouthful that it is. It's on all of the letters, of course, I suppose you must see them since you've been a guest now for perhaps three weeks." Aziraphale isn't sure that 'guest' is the right word. But no other appropriate one comes to mind, not one that doesn't seem horribly impolite. He's not even sure if the presence can understand him, or that he isn't just drawing unwanted attention to himself by addressing it. But he's started now and he might as well finish. "This is my bookshop, I've had it for rather a long time. It's - well, it's not what it was. There was a fire recently and it damaged a large section of the shop, faulty wiring in the walls they said. I lost a lot of books, if not to the fire itself then to water damage from the hoses."

It's still a deeply unpleasant memory, but something he's working his way past. It's getting easier to talk about without feeling like his throat is closing up.

"I really don't mind if you want to - to read the books, if that's something you can do. I like to think there's a little something for everyone. Fiction and non-fiction, science journals, religious texts, encyclopedias, a selection of cookbooks. I also have a rather large poetry section, though I'm aware that's not to everyone's taste."

He speaks for a while, mostly about the shop, until listening to his own voice talking to thin air becomes somehow the silliest thing he can image.

"Anyway, if you'd like to - to introduce yourself. Please feel free." No, he was wrong, that's the silliest thing he can imagine.

Aziraphale sighs, finishes his lukewarm cup of tea, and takes himself upstairs to his small flat.

-

When he wakes in the cold, early hours of the morning, to the unsettling and familiar sensation of having his body abandoned to sleep beneath him, unable to move a single muscle. He finds that this time he's not alone. 

There's a shape curved over him in the dark. A hunch of angles and bare skin, shrouded in wine-dark hair that trails the sheets and the expanse of Aziraphale's chest, then curls round the crooked angles of two pale arms. The face is long and sharp, clearly inhuman, with a thin mouth and wasp-yellow eyes, pupils slit like a cat's, or a snake's. 

"Crowley," the demon says.

Aziraphale stares at the figure before him, and seriously considers whether terror is an appropriate response. His body seems to disagree, and he finds he's still breathing in a strangely slow rhythm, for all the startling appearance of a non-human creature in his bed at night. He watches Crowley slide back and ease himself upright, to reveal that the demon is awkwardly straddling Aziraphale's knees, the long, thin bend of him moving in a way that looks uncomfortable, unnatural, borderline impossible. But enough of his body is visible to discern that he'd be tall, if standing, taller than him by perhaps a few inches. The demon's hands are set either side of him, Aziraphale can't see them but he can hear his fingers whispering through the bunched sheets. Which can't help but draw his attention to how close they are. At how Crowley would barely have to stretch to pin him down and tear his throat out.

"I'm the reason you can't move," the demon hurriedly explains, as if he'd seen something like the beginnings of panic in Aziraphale's eyes. "Sorry about that, it's what I do." The hair slides off of Aziraphale's body, though he'd swear the demon never moves. "I'm a sleep paralysis demon. This state between sleeping and waking, the suffocation, the fear of imminent death, it's sort of my job." There's the faintest apologetic hiss to the words, as if a serpent is closer to the truth than Aziraphale had thought. "It's my place."

Crowley straightens completely, and Aziraphale realises that the demon is naked to the waist, that the shrouded, shifting edges of what Aziraphale had thought was fabric, is all actually his hair, enough of it to drape the edges of the bed and spill onto the floor. When the curtain of it spreads and slips aside he can see the pale expanse of Crowley's chest, thin as the rest of him, but surprisingly human-looking, there's a patch of hair, small nipples, the odd faint scar here and there, all strangely unexpected on his demonic frame. Aziraphale follows the body down curiously, past the odd curling drift of red hair. It's too dark to make out much more than sharp, angular hips, and then the vague, muffled shape of what looks like some sort of loose, old-fashioned breeches. Though they're bunched up to expose the bony juts of the demon's knees. Lower than that Aziraphale can't see, cannot move his head to look.

The demon's telling the truth, Aziraphale is utterly immobile. His body is spread on its back, a lazy and inviting sprawl, that feels completely inappropriate for the situation. He's vulnerable and entirely helpless, and he's quite sure that he should be terrified. A ghost was one thing, but this is something entirely different. Crowley has been good enough to identify himself as an actual demon, something named by almost all cultures on earth as a being of evil. A demon is, by design, a creature of destruction and violence and hate, who will not rest until it sets some sort of claim on Aziraphale's soul.

It seems very simple.

And yet -

"M'sorry if I startled you the other night," the demon says. "I was just curious. I mostly see people when they're sleeping. It's where I can manifest the most strongly." Crowley shifts a little, until he can reach the book Aziraphale was reading before bed. "I found the cookbooks you talked about, do you cook? You look like you cook? I mean - I don't mean that in a bad way, obviously, I'm not suggesting that you eat too much. I've never cooked before. It always seems like a lot of work, and eating never looked like that much fun to me."

Aziraphale had thought a demon would feel significantly more malevolent, more bleeding walls and choking miasma of despair and less - less - well less in the way of fidgety curiosity. This thin creature, shrouded in its own rust-red hair, talking rapidly as its long, sharp hands seem to test every texture within reach, doesn't seem particularly menacing. If anything they're giving off an air of curious, hopeful enthusiasm, as if the demon had never had the opportunity to talk to anyone before.

Aziraphale supposes, if they really are a demon who haunts those between wake and sleep, that it might not be too far from the truth.

"I like your shop," Crowley tells him. "How long have you had it? It feels old, has a lot of corners, and it doesn't mind tucking the odd demon away into its liminal spaces while you're awake. I could tell that it had been damaged though, that there had been fire." Crowley's eyes, strangely focused and intense, flick back up to meet his own. Aziraphale is not expecting the sympathy in them. "I could taste it, what's left of it. Not very long ago."

Aziraphale gives a series of rapid blinks. Startled that he can manage that much. But Crowley seems pleased by the acknowledgement. Enough that he slithers closer, the spare weight of his body either side of him on the bed strangely friendly. Aziraphale is being friendly with a demon while his body is completely paralysed, his mother would be so proud.

"I'm sorry about your books." Crowley's apology is quiet, but it sounds genuine. "I've been looking though your collection. You have a lot, too many to choose from but some of them look interesting. I've even heard of a few of them, Dickens, Austen, Shelley, Chaucer, Poe. Not that I have much experience to go on. But you have more books than anyone I've ever met. You can't have read them all. Have you? Which ones are your favourites? I can't find a specific genre that you seem to enjoy collecting from the most. I've looked. Do you have a shelf where you keep your favourites? No, of course not, I've seen you take them from every-which-where."

Narrow pupils search his face, as if the demon is checking to see if Aziraphale is still held fast in his paralysis - or possibly just using the opportunity while he's aware and awake to look at him properly.

"Perhaps you could recommend me something?" The request almost sounds tentative. "I like the funny ones."

It's such an odd statement from a demon that Aziraphale can feel his body trying to smile, and maybe some of it reaches his eyes, because there's a faint upward quirk to the demon's thin mouth too. A flash of sharp, white teeth shining through.

"You're named after an angel, did you know that?" Crowley tells him softly. "How did you get a name like that? You look a bit like one too, with your hair and your pale sheets, sleepy and content before I caught you between. Not that angels sleep. They don't, you know. They have to be ever watchful, ready to thwart the wiles of some foul fiend."

The smile that had been a shadow on his face is erased completely, mouth briefly a thin, tight line. 

"That's me, I'm the fiend, obviously." The demon watches his eyes, as if waiting for some reaction from him, some confirmation of his wicked nature. His own, sharp yellow ones widen a little when Aziraphale refuses to give him one. 

Crowley does nothing but breathe quietly for a second, as if Aziraphale has surprised him again. 

"You're the first person who ever spoke to me. The first person who ever asked my name. Did you know that?" Crowley makes it sound as if he's still not entirely sure why. But he seems unwilling to follow that line of thought. 

Aziraphale wonders if anyone else has ever known the demon's name. If it's ever been scratched anywhere but in a small, leather bound notebook.

"I tried some of your wine, angel." The pet name seems to amuse the demon. "I hope you don't mind. It's very good. Where did you get it? Can you make your own wine here? I s'pose not, it's a bookshop after all. Stupid of me. Ignore that."

Crowley takes a deep gasp of air, as if he's putting unseen effort into something.

"Maybe we could talk again, I'd like that. I'd like it if we could talk again -"

The world swims black, and Aziraphale is aware of nothing for a long stretch of time.

Until he startles awake, inhaling a breath as if to offer a reply to any one of the demon's many questions, only to find, with a brief glance at the clock, that it's pushing eleven in the morning, and he should have opened the shop two hours ago.

He's completely unharmed, the sheets having been resettled at his chest some time after he'd fallen asleep again. He finds himself unexpectedly touched by the gesture. He can't help thinking about it while he dresses for the day. About how the demon had seemed completely uninterested in the state of his soul, or whatever sins he may have committed. In fact all he'd appeared to want was someone to talk to. He'd seemed quite unbearably, desperately lonely.

Aziraphale - Aziraphale knows very well what that's like.

It's a simple enough matter to wish Crowley good morning as he descends the main stairs. To offer a tentative thank you for seeing him safely back to sleep again, and to make a short list of books he thinks the demon might find interesting, and where they currently reside in the shop. Before he tentatively gives permission for Crowley to visit him again.

His common sense does briefly chastise him for effectively consorting with demons, and how clearly dangerous that must be. Aziraphale ignores it.

"Oh, and feel free to help yourself to my wine while I'm sleeping. I have no one else to share it with."

Something in the bookshelves creaks, as if in surprised pleasure.


	2. Chapter 2

Aziraphale finds the languid stillness of this quiet space between wake and sleep to be strangely calming the more he visits it. Other people have described sleep paralysis as terrifying, their half-awake minds conjuring disturbing images to explain their inability to move. Inventing an unseen menace that bears them ill.

Aziraphale's menace no longer hides himself in corners but wanders his room, or settles on the bed beside him. Always talking quietly, questions that Aziraphale won't be able to answer until morning, observations that he can't laugh at, or make interested noises to. But Crowley doesn't seem to mind. He still seems thrilled just to have Aziraphale's attention, to have his company. After all, the demon has spent years, possibly centuries, with no one to talk to, Aziraphale imagines he's been alone with his thoughts for a very long time. Though it does mean that Crowley's developed a conversational style entirely his own, often disjointed and rambling, prone to interrupting himself. But his enthusiasm and delight at discovering new things is infectious. He's brutally honest, occasionally witheringly sarcastic, and much more intelligent than his easily distracted dialogue would suggest. 

Aziraphale has found himself utterly charmed by him.

Crowley's clearly reluctant to share anything of Hell, a place whose existence Aziraphale must now come to terms with, but the demon will offer snatches of memory. He'll tell Aziraphale about the places he's been, the things that he'd seen in his long, lonely years on earth.

It seems to somehow make it all the stranger that he's here with Aziraphale now.

"You left your glasses on again." Crowley tuts and gently takes hold of the sides of them with his warm fingers, draws them free. Aziraphale feels them slide away from his face, the uncomfortable pressure easing. He watches Crowley shut them and place them on the bedside table. "How many times do I have to tell you, you'll break them if you're not careful."

There's a quiet hum, and the briefest touch to his waist. There and then gone, almost too quick to register. After it comes the tickling trail of hair, always sliding, as if the shiny lengths of it are being pulled by unseen hands, or searching their environment, like the sinuous bodies of serpents. It seems to move independent of Crowley either way, but Aziraphale has never felt threatened by it.

"I think you like me taking them from you. Tidying you up for the night, you'll have me slipping you into your pyjamas next." The demon seems to think better of that line of conversation, biting down on it with a sigh and a dismissive noise.

Crowley leans over him, leaving the scent of matches and metal and something lightly spiced, arm stretching as he settles what looks like the last book Aziraphale had recommended to him among the pile he'd taken to bed. Where there now also resides half a glass of wine, as if the demon had been indulging while he watched him sleep.

Something of the thought must show in his face, because Crowley gestures at the glass.

"I like the new wine you bought, this one's a fruity one, not so much 'dirty barrel' on the tongue.'"

The cheek of it!

The demon shoots him an amused look, as if it was mostly said to tease. "Don't think I can't hear you tutting at me right now. You don't have to wait until morning I can see it perfectly well."

Aziraphale attempts to look as if he's thinking nothing of the sort, but probably fails completely. Crowley's eyes miss very little. Though conveying anything at all reliably is still an awkward and frustrating matter.

"I finished The Importance Of Being Earnest." 

Aziraphale can already tell by his tone that he wasn't a fan. He likes to imagine he makes his next, flat exhale sound like a sigh of disappointment. It appears that Wilde is not a passion they are going to share.

Crowley shrugs, and Aziraphale feels the movement more than sees it, a gentle jostling of his body on the bed. 

"It was fine, I guess, all the subterfuge was alright, but it was a bit unnecessarily complicated and waffling, and the resolution hinged on far too many coincidences. I suppose it helped that everyone in the book was a bloody idiot. But I didn't find it as funny as some of the others you recommended. Certainly not as funny as A Midsummer Night's Dream. Shakespeare at least knew the value of entertainment in punishing people for their own stupidity."

Aziraphale resolves to come back to this in the morning, suggest that Crowley likes his humour to be loud and obvious. Which, he suspects, the demon will find vaguely insulting, and will use as an excuse to judge Aziraphale's taste in turn. Aziraphale will retaliate by adding another four books to his list of recommendations. Which Crowley has grumbled about but not objected to yet.

"Did you know that Shakespeare made up a bunch of the words himself, just for fun, and then people started adding them to the language like they'd always been there. You probably do know that, I'm fairly sure you have copies of all of his work. He got shit for it at the time, but, I mean, that's the essence of language, isn't it? Someone looking around and going 'y'know, there could be more words for things no one's properly described yet.' Like 'lonely' that's supposed to be one of his."

How appropriate, Aziraphale thinks. Though his brain helpfully provides a few that could have done the job before - _desolate, abandoned, solitary, unremembered, forsaken._

Crowley twists around until he can rest against the headboard next to him, careful not to press into him too much, one leg gently swinging off the edge of the bed. 

"I was sent to vex one of Shakespeare's actors once, he went on about the man constantly. He was certain Shakespeare had a whole brace of mistresses, too greedy to have just the one, no, he had to have a brace of them. Of course the man was also a jealous, drunken brute, so I never believed a word he said. Bastard used to mistreat his dog too. So, I'll be honest, I don't regret standing over him at night, looking like the half-skeletal ghost of his father, until he eventually drank himself to death."

Aziraphale doesn't feel as if he has the right to judge, nurturing and collecting the wicked was Crowley's job after all, and it was the sixteenth century. A fact which still throws him a touch if he dwells on it too long.

"I wanted to keep the dog," Crowley adds. "I liked him. He never seemed to mind me wandering the house at night. Most animals can sense what I am, sets their hackles up right away, it does, and they go mad at the walls, or cower in their beds. But this one, I think he was just happy to be petted by someone who wasn't going to kick him later, he didn't care if I was a demon. Eh, I couldn't work out a way to feed him though, or at least how to go out and buy him food. I think the boy who did the props took him eventually."

There's the long brush of a bare foot against the floorboards.

"I've not reached the end of your list yet, unsurprisingly, since you change it on a whim every day or so."

Aziraphale would huff at him if he could, because honestly he's not 'changing it on a whim,' he's honing it into something more Crowley. As he learns more about him. Aziraphale should have known at the beginning that the demon would require something a touch more obviously scandalous and action-oriented, when he made the original list of recommendations. He's proven himself far more a fan of the ribald ones than Aziraphale so far, but then he supposes that Crowley is a demon, even if an unconventional one, the lechery probably appeals to him. 

He's also learned, through careful nudging, that Crowley appreciates mysteries, disguises, mythology, a healthy dash of unseen menace, and car chases. He also seems to prefer happy endings. Though, having spent more time with him, Aziraphale finds he's not entirely surprised by that.

Of course, their conversations about literature are, by necessity, rather delayed. With Crowley giving his opinions, comments and scathing analysis in the eleven to twenty six minutes that the paralysis lasts. It's always shorter when the demon loses concentration. Their conversations are sometimes rudely cut off entirely when Crowley startles himself into laughter, or finds himself wallowing too deeply in an unpleasant memory, of which there appear to be far too many. Aziraphale chooses never to press on those places when he's awake, when he's talking to the heavy, attentive air in the bookshop and imagining the demon's unexpectedly expressive face and curious eyes, his rude noises of disbelief, the way he'll fidget constantly. Aziraphale likes to think he sometimes makes the demon smile where he can't see.

It does feel a little unfair though, that Aziraphale has all day to process his thoughts, to idle away hours sharing passages from his favourite books. While Crowley has only the moments where he can squeeze himself into the gaps, words always hurried, always forced out in spits and bursts, as if he knows he doesn't have the time. As if he has more thoughts, more ideas, more questions than he can bear, and tries to voice them all at once.

But weeks have dragged on like this, far easier than he could ever have imagined.

Crowley doesn't visit him every night, some nights Aziraphale doesn't sleep, or he sleeps poorly, perhaps not deeply enough for his body to truly relax. He's more aware of Crowley in the bookshop now though, the slithering, raspy hiss of him across the floorboards and shelves. Which he's noticed is not too dissimilar from the drifting pull of hair. 

The demon's not bound here, not bound to him. Aziraphale had worried, at first, that he'd been forced to follow the small leather-bound book that had his name scratched in the cover. A book that leaves Crowley unexpectedly quiet, as if unwilling to admit that he's the one who'd sketched the plants inside, though Aziraphale can't help but feel that he was. The idea of a demon that has interests, has soft places that can be just as vulnerable as his own. It's a strange thought, but one that warms Aziraphale somehow, that reassures him when he occasionally worries that he'd let this strange, easy friendship between them accelerate much too fast. That he's been reckless when even Crowley sees fit to remind him occasionally that he's a demon. That wicked deeds are his nature. Crowley would be the first person to call himself a fiend. He'd be the first person to insist that he was not to be trusted.

Though Aziraphale has seen no evidence to support that. The only wicked deeds Aziraphale has found him guilty of so far is emptying half his wine bottles, and leaving the occasional crumb-filled plate on a random stack of books.

No, if anything there's a nervous uncertainty to Crowley, as if Aziraphale's opinion of him matters, as if he's constantly waiting to be told he's done something wrong, or that he's unwanted. It feels sometimes like he assumes Aziraphale's friendship is conditional, to be rescinded at the first sign of conflict, or ill behaviour, or boredom. Aziraphale dislikes the thought immensely, and has attempted to coax a few of the demon's more scathing opinions to the surface lately, to encourage him in his teasing, and his banter. It seems to come naturally to him, and pulls that thin but expressive mouth into a smile more often than not. He tells himself that the demon has never had a friend before, never learned how it's supposed to work. But Aziraphale would like to think that he's not simply the first person who'd ever tried, the first person that had acknowledged Crowley as anything other than a hellish phantom.

Though perhaps there's something more selfish there than Aziraphale wants to admit.

Crowley is, there's no point in lying to himself, strangely lovely, and he can't help but notice. His many otherworldly angles, though they're often shrouded in darkness, and trailed by the unendingly long mass of his rust-red hair, are undoubtedly appealing. The narrow, graceful fluidity of him is fascinating to watch, the stretch of his bare limbs, that are always warm against Aziraphale's own skin, in the moments where Crowley brushes and leans and settles close to him. His eyes, luminous and striking in the dark. The thin, gently crooked smile, that hides a tongue that will fork and lend his words a hiss when he's distracted, or excited.

Aziraphale sighs internally. He can be as poetic as he likes, the honest truth is that he desires the demon. 

How can he not?

He'd tried to contain his thoughts at first. To leave them in his head, where they belonged, while Crowley slinks around him and sprawls beside him, voice a smooth, reassuring roll of questions and amusements and gentle teasing. Because Aziraphale had thought it deeply unfair to ruin what's been a perfectly lovely partnership, strange and unconventional as it may be. And besides, for all Crowley's strangely flirtatious and easy banter, the demon has never given any indication that he's interested in Aziraphale in that way. His excitable, affectionate manner could just as easily be enthusiasm for a friendship which he's never had before.

It would be cruel of Aziraphale to ruin a friendship that Crowley clearly enjoys, to feed his own selfish needs.

Aziraphale is a man long-used to throwing cold water on his own desires, and he's no longer as young as he used to be. He's no longer as slim, or as active as he was in his youth, when he would have considered his charms perfectly adequate, but nothing special. 

And even if Crowley did - even if he did harbour such feelings towards him. Aziraphale isn't sure that it's wise, not sure that it's fair on either of them. Oh, it's not that he's afraid Crowley would take advantage of him, in such a vulnerable state - because he is terribly vulnerable when Crowley visits, that much has always been true. No, for all his protests to the contrary, for all his sharpened, insistent reminders that he's a demon and he's made to do evil. Aziraphale doesn't believe he's that sort of brute. No, he's more afraid of how easy it would be to accept touches from him in the dark. The embarrassing knowledge of how quickly Aziraphale would say yes, to the barest suggestion of intimacy, that he would let Crowley take anything he wished from him.

More importantly, he's afraid of how much it will hurt afterwards, when his new friend inevitably leaves him.

But in the end, he still thinks about it. He still entertains the thoughts. Because he's weak.

He can't help himself.

-

The days pass slowly, as opposed to the nights which are often far too short. The customers remain, as always, a faint trickle that mostly browse his old, slowly filling shelves, before occasionally purchasing a battered paperback from the selection by the door. The collectors, the discerning, those smart enough to spot the genuine article, are more rare, but Aziraphale is even less likely to relinquish anything from his collection since the fire. So much of it had been lost, and the thought of parting with any more - it's almost as painful as the thought of putting it all in storage and packing up for good.

Perhaps he's more of a book museum than a shop these days, he decides sadly, reluctant to do anything more than let visitors view the remains.

The shop is lonely during the day. Though in the long spaces between customers he reads Crowley passages from The Count of Monte Christo. He thinks the demon can't possibly disapprove of a complex tale of revenge, punishment and disguises. Also the occasional sword fight, which Aziraphale has decided is an era-appropriate substitution for a car chase. 

The only semi-regular company he has other than Crowley is Anathema, who works in the occult emporium not far from his shop. She seems to have adopted him in some way since the fire, even though he's probably twice her age. She insists it's because he looked as if he could use a friend. Ordinarily a lovely sentiment, but he's sometimes frustrated by how she often seems to take his well-being as a personal challenge. No matter how many cups of tea he makes to distract her. She's quite stubborn, and surprisingly practical for someone who sets stock in all sorts of occult paraphernalia - though Aziraphale supposes he has no business taking such a dismissive tone in his head. He's being visited nightly by a demon, after all. He's been giving him book recommendations. He know what he sounds like when he laughs, the way his mouth curls when he's protesting Aziraphale's choice of wine. He's felt the dragging, slithering slide of his living hair moving by itself. He's watched him smile as if Aziraphale is the most fascinating thing in the world.

Aziraphale sets his mug down, rather harder than he intends.

There's an odd sort of tension to the shop. As if Crowley is somewhere in the spaces between the books, waiting to see where Aziraphale's strange mood is leading. Which makes him feel restless and guilty. He could apologise, tell Crowley he'd been distracted, that he has a lot on his mind, inventory coming in next week, taxes to be done, bills to be paid. But it would be a lie, and he doesn't want to lie to him. None of it presses upon his mind quite like -

He's speaking before he means to, before he can talk himself out of it, voice strangely loud in the quiet of the shop.

"It's quite alright if you want to touch me. I really don't mind."

There's an uncertain stillness to the air suddenly, as if the whole building is holding its breath. 

"I know I can't make - make friendly overtures when we're together. That I can't reach out and touch you." 

Aziraphale can't imagine Crowley would have had many opportunities to touch anyone gently, over the years. And his nature makes it impossible for a human to touch him. He's not even certain if a demon would want something like that. It feels a very human thing to want. But he hates the thought that Crowley might think he's not allowed, that Aziraphale would - would reject his touch if it happened by accident.

"I don't know if it's something you want. But I thought I'd let you know that you could, if you wanted to, that I wouldn't mind, that I wouldn't be offended, or upset, if you touched me. I think that I would like -" Aziraphale wonders if he's being very brave, or very stupid. "I wouldn't mind. We're friends, after all, it's what friends do. Or if you wanted - if you wanted - whatever you want, I shall be happy."

_Liar_ , his brain tells him.

-

The bookshop creaks for days.

Aziraphale finds himself tossing in a restless sleep, before waking tangled and frustrated in the sheets. There's no sign of Crowley, nothing but the tense, heavy air and the fall of dust from the high shelves, that house books Aziraphale knows he should push the ladder towards and see to, before they crumble to dust. There's no excuse for a lack of care, especially not now, especially not when he has so many fewer books than before.

He resolves to deal with them sooner rather than later. 

Oh, he knows perfectly well that he's simply distracting himself from Crowley's absence. There's no way to argue that it wasn't something he'd said, something in the suggestion he'd made. That perhaps it had been a dreadful mistake to give so much away, or at least so quickly. The worst part is that he doesn't quite know how to apologise for it, how to take it back - for all that he'd wanted it, he would never have said anything if he'd known it would damage their relationship. 

The thought needles at him constantly. 

He doesn't feel confident trying to engage the demon in conversation. If he'd offended him, or angered him, or cruelly tempted him in some way, then it didn't seem fair to continue on as if nothing had happened. Instead he quietly adds a selection of books on botany to his personal collection, several illustrated books on space - so modern the pages are glossy and bright - and a few locked-room murder mysteries. He reasons that comes across as a clear enough apology without words, since Crowley has professed interest in all of them.

It's not the dark middle of the night when Crowley finally comes to him, it's still early, the lamp still on, the sound of traffic still a faint suggestion outside. The demon is a hunch of awkward angles at the end of Aziraphale's bed, farther away than he's been for a while, hair a fall of looping stillness over one shoulder. His narrow mouth is a line in the dark, eyes too big in his face, yellow-bright around thin slits of pupil. His expression is angry, but there's something underneath it that definitely looks hurt. Which wakes a deep sort of guilt in Aziraphale. He feels Crowley's name curl round his tongue, a breath of worry, and apology. But he can't loose it. He can't say a single word, unable to apologise, or explain, and he hates how useless that makes him feel.

The bed moves gently as Crowley pulls his feet under him, shifts up the mattress until Aziraphale can feel the bone of his knee, the heat of his skin over his bare arm.

"You lay in your bed looking like an angel, and tell me that it's alright if I touch you?" Crowley says darkly. Before going abruptly quiet, narrow mouth twitching in something that looks like disgust - Aziraphale feels a moment of sinking misery at the thought that it's for him. Until Crowley's dark red hair twists and then gently moves, spreading on the demon's skin like waves, pulling at the narrow cage of his ribs, and his upper arms, in a way that feels restless. As if he wants to reach out, to touch him, but knows that he shouldn't.

"As if I'm not one of the damned," Crowley finishes. Like he thinks Aziraphale needed the reminder.

Oh.

Aziraphale has never so badly wanted to fight the binding that holds him, to lift an arm, reach out, cup that sharp face in his hand and tell him that there's nothing in him that Aziraphale is disgusted by, or afraid of. He deserves to let himself have things if he wants them. He wants to tell him that his affection - his desires - won't ruin Aziraphale. That he feels the same way. Crowley is not the corrupt, unholy thing he thinks he is, not if he doesn't want to be.

But he can't say any of it, all he manages is a soft, rushing trail of air, the gentlest punch of it leaving his body. 

_Oh, Crowley_.

Crowley lifts his sharp, serpentine eyes all the same, head tilted as if he's heard the sentiment. He very slowly slithers higher, carefully settling himself over Aziraphale's knees.

"What do you want from me, Aziraphale?" The question is frustrated, or something worse, something that sounds more desperate, as if there are too many ways Aziraphale could break him. "What sort of touches do you imagine I would give you?"

Crowley's hands lift and spread suddenly on the curve of his waist, hot through the t-shirt Aziraphale had put on to sleep in. The shock of it, of the question in it, would have left him breathless if he had any control over that.

"Something like this?" Crowley asks, but the words shake, feel uncertain and confused.

Aziraphale can't answer, can't press into the touch, can't nod his head. He can't raise his arm and trail his fingers through that fire-red hair, feel the cool strands drag and slither between them. He can't press a thumb to the painful looking frown lines between his eyes. Can't smooth it out the way he'd like to. Crowley is on his own, has been on his own for so long, and Aziraphale hurts deeply for him. He should have been more clear, he should have explained. This is partly his fault.

"Do you mean this?" It's quiet, as if Crowley honestly doesn't know. "Is this what you want?" There's the faint dig of sharp teeth into the fine line of Crowley's lower lip, eyes frantically searching his own, as if not knowing the answer is the worst thing imaginable. 

But what Aziraphale wanted wasn't the point. He should have made that clear. This isn't just about what he wants. What Crowley wants is just as important. What Crowley wants _matters._

"Is it softness you're looking for, something sweet and tender? Do you think I'm capable of that?" The frown lines deepen. The gentle question is so honest, so raw, as if Crowley doubted it himself. 

The quiet drags on, unbearably, as if Crowley expects an answer. Before he seems to remember that Aziraphale can't, and the thought seems to frustrate him.

"Or is roughness more to your taste?" Crowley asks, voice and eyes suddenly sharp and intent. "Is that what you're after? Do you dream of a demon stripping you against your pale sheets, pinning you down, leaving marks on your soft, human skin -" he stops abruptly, as if he'd shocked himself. His hands are now clenched at his thighs, and he seems to realise, to forcibly unfold his fingers, the dark shadow of something wet and coppery beneath.

Crowley stares at him for what feels like an age, the frown on his face making him look tired and ancient. He's quiet for so long that Aziraphale fears the frozen moment will end in this tense, wounded place.

Until Crowley heaves a breath, and then shakes his head.

"I'm sorry, angel, I didn't mean -" There's a gap for all the things he didn't mean, it goes unfilled. "I've never touched anyone before," he says eventually, far more quietly, trying to pull himself back together again. "Not like this. I'm not sure I know how to do it right. All I've ever done is smother the wicked in their sleep." There's a simple honesty to the words. "I'd sit on their chests and push fear into them, whispering all their guilty secrets until they go mad or die. Suffocating in their own sins. That's how I touch people. That's the only way I know how to touch people." Crowley stops, shakes his head again. "I don't - I don't do this, I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to touch you like you want to be touched, _deserve_ to be touched."

Aziraphale wishes desperately that he could open his mouth, that he could express everything he's feeling - anything that he's feeling. Reassure the demon that he's proven himself to be nothing like the books would have people believe. That if he collects souls for Hell then surely he does it reluctantly, does it unwillingly. Feels the unholy weight of it.

There's a rustle of fabric, a shuffling of knees as Crowley resettles his weight across the width Aziraphale's thighs.

"I don't know how to touch you like I want to," he admits, and Aziraphale can't help the way his breath shakes out a little, at the realisation that maybe he's not the only one of them who'd gotten far more attached than he'd meant to. "But the fact that you would ask me to..."

Aziraphale hates the way Crowley sounds so hopeless, as if what he'd suggested was impossible, unthinkable. That if Crowley even tries he'll ruin this quiet, affectionate comfort they've both found in each other. He can't bear the stillness of his own hands, the way they can't even scratch feebly at the sheets, let alone lift to give comfort. The way Aziraphale can't breathe Crowley's name, tell him that he's sorry, tell him that he never intended to make him feel this way.

_No, Crowley, no, please, you mustn't think that._

He so very badly wants to reach out. He wants to touch the sharply angled cheek, the awkward curve of his jaw, the fine line of his mouth that's finally comfortable smiling for him. Aziraphale's eyes feel wet and tight, the sight of the demon suddenly wavering, and he blinks fiercely. Refusing to let his own feelings hide Crowley from him.

Crowley frowns down at him, seemingly drawn to the frantic motion. He stares for a long second, looking confused and guilty. Until he seems to understand, all at once, eyes going wide in startled realisation. The uncertainty melts away, leaving a surprised hope in its place, leaving him exactly as he is, narrow and crooked, all angles and piercing, serpentine eyes. The scent of brimstone and blood and tin.

The demon bends slowly, his back a long and beautiful curve, shoulder blades shifting up as he falls. He presses his hot mouth to Aziraphale's, a shivery, hungry noise breaking out of him. Aziraphale can't kiss him back, but the sensation is magnificent all the same.

For a first kiss, it's perfect.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains a scene where there are clear issues of questionable consent.

Aziraphale finds himself in an exceedingly good mood the morning after their kiss. While he busies himself making his usual morning cup of tea he also admits to the vast, open space of the shop, and hopefully also an attentive demon, that he was quite open to being kissed again, should Crowley wish such a thing. The soft admission sends a vibrating shudder through the stacks, somewhat reminiscent of the disturbance caused by heavy machinery.

The quiet afterwards is pointed, and carries the faint air of embarrassment. Which Aziraphale can't help but find amusing. It seems so very genuine and honest, an unexpectedly human sort of reaction. It leaves him feeling rather brave.

"In fact I would enjoy it immensely if you kissed me," Aziraphale adds. "Whenever the urge takes you."

Honestly, he has no one to blame but himself that his concentration is ruined for the rest of the day.

He digs out some M.R James, and some Algernon Blackwood to read to Crowley, once the evening draws in, since the demon had shared that he was also a fan of the 'spooky ones.' He leaves moments between the stories to offer his opinions, to discuss the characters and settings, and to invite Crowley to regale him with his own thoughts once Aziraphale is a captive audience, so to speak.

But he doesn't linger downstairs once it gets late. He pours Crowley a glass of wine, and even convinces himself to leave the lamp in the back room on for him. An action that would have been unthinkable before. But he's not alone in the shop any more. Crowley would wake him if he needed to. He would wake him if anything happened.

Between one and two in the morning, Aziraphale finds himself once more in the space somewhere between an awakening and sleep, with a demon looming over him. Though he's not afraid in the slightest. It takes only seconds for Crowley's mouth to become a desperate flare of heat against his own. One slow press leading into another, and another, until Aziraphale fancied he could taste the strange, smoky flavour of the demon's mouth.

Until Crowley eventually gives a sigh against Aziraphale's cheek and eases away.

"I've been thinking about that all day," he says through a breathless smile, as if he'd worn himself thin wanting it.

-

Kisses become a regular thing, and Aziraphale can't help but indulge in the fact that they've clearly become something more than friends. That they have something new and intimate that thrills him whenever he thinks about it. Though he's still a touch too nervous to give it a name yet. That doesn't mean he can't enjoy the opportunity to indulge Crowley, the way he would any other new partner. He finds himself buying wine for Crowley, stocking books for Crowley, noticing interesting things in his day to tell Crowley about later. 

Today he'd neglected to open the shop on time, in favour of acquiring exactly the right sort of temptation for the demon in his life. 

"Crowley, I found some of those cinnamon biscuits you like. I shall leave them in the tin on the sideboard, and shan't judge you if you eat far too many of them. You wicked thing."

"Aziraphale?" His name comes with the shadow of a figure to his left.

Aziraphale flinches, startled, the bag he'd been half dipping into jerking alarmingly in his grip.

"Who are you talking to?" Anathema is a sudden, smiling shape at his shoulder, familiar and not at all unwelcome, simply unexpected this early in the morning. She is, as always, put together to an enviable degree. Her dark shirt and waistcoat neatly buttoned, hair pinned atop her head, glasses perfectly suited to her face. Something Aziraphale could never quite manage, no matter how many pairs he tried on. She's balanced on the steps behind him, the hem of her long skirt almost brushing one of them, though she doesn't seem to care.

"Anathema, I didn't see you there. Good heaven's, you scared the life out of me."

"Sorry." She smiles and gently settles a hand on his arm, once he's moving again she eases in behind him. "Thought I'd pop over and say hi. Since I haven't seen you for a while. Unless I'm disturbing something?" Her expression tells him that she clearly hopes she was disturbing something. That there was something to disturb. "You were talking to someone, is someone else here?" There's a interested lilt to her voice that sounds almost pleased, which suggests his own tone of voice had been far too affectionate to be dismissed as merely friendly.

"Oh, well - no." He flails briefly for some sort of explanation. Since the truth is obviously out of the question. "I mean not any more, clearly, he must have left. What a shame." He tries for an apologetic smile.

Her own smile turns into something positively indecent. He supposes he deserves that, deception has never been his strong suit.

"If you brought him biscuits, then it definitely is," she decides. "I didn't know you were seeing someone." Anathema looks tentatively hopeful at the words. He can't help but find that a touch irritating, as if his ability to form romantic entanglements has been withering on the vine.

But how is Aziraphale supposed to explain? How is he supposed to tell her that the object of his affection is a demon that he can't even reach out and touch. A demon he's been meeting intimately, in the spaces in the night when he's somewhere between awake and asleep. Because his...his intimate partner paralyses him with his very presence. How is he supposed to tell her that Crowley has seeped himself into the very walls of this place, and Aziraphale made him welcome?

He can't obviously. He can't tell her any of that. Even if she did believe him, he doubts she would be supportive of Crowley's presence in his life.

"Oh, it's not really - I'm not seeing him, obviously." Which is absolutely true at this moment in time, because he's currently tucked into another plane of existence. "He's just someone with similar interests. Not really anything. Nothing like that. A friend." 

He's expecting the brief flash of disappointment, though the touch of fondness beneath it does a lot to soothe the sting. Before Anathema shakes her head and adjusts her glasses.

"But someone that might become something, maybe? I know you've been -" _Desperately lonely_ , the words seem to hang in the air, both of them refusing to say them out loud. Aziraphale is grateful for that, at least. "And I know you like to get to know someone first. But it's been more than a year since you've even tried to see anyone socially, or romantically."

"Yes, and the way it turned out rather put me off the whole thing," Aziraphale admits. The memory still stings enough that he can be honest about it without fear of offending her, because that was an altogether humiliating experience. One she, admittedly, had accepted most of the responsibility for.

Anathema winces.

"I am sorry about Gabriel. I honestly didn't know he was so -" She pulls a face, that Aziraphale isn't sure entirely encapsulates all the things Gabriel was, in their very brief and disastrous attempt at a date. "We weren't really friends yet, properly, I know you better now. I like to think I do at least. Anyway, I absolutely learned my lesson there. So, if you are available, well, I was recently introduced to Martin, who isn't quite as handsome, but he's kind, he's a vet, and he likes to read -"

A table against the far wall chooses that exact moment to mysteriously tip over, spraying a collection of nineteenth century cookbooks across the floor.

"Oh, Christ." Anathema jumps, obviously, then breathes a laugh at her own reaction.

"My fault entirely," Aziraphale says easily, staring very hard at the untidy tumble of books. "I normally stack them more carefully, but I've had a lot to go through recently." He very pointedly doesn't look up towards the stacks, where he fancies he can hear the faintest slithering trail of hair.

"The new bookshelves came up much better than I thought they would," Anathema says kindly, but there's an honesty there too.

Aziraphale nods. "They did, you know how worried I was that they'd look out of place, but now that they're filled they're a much closer match to the originals than I expected. Though they don't smell the same." He's expecting a certain amount of amused teasing after the last confession, but Anathema simply nods.

"Smell is where all the most powerful memories live," she agrees. "It has to be more than a little disconcerting to be in a familiar place, with familiar things, but to have it just not feel right. To be constantly reminded that something's different, which just reminds you of the reason why all over again."

Aziraphale exhales a grateful breath, and nods. This, he thinks, this is why he likes spending time with Anathema. She understands the things he always feels so stupid trying to explain.

"I suppose I'll get used to it," he tells her. And if there's a question mark at the end of that sentence then she won't judge him for it either.

She clearly senses that he'd quite like to change the subject though. Which is absolutely true. He hasn't had nearly enough to drink to brace himself for talking about the repairs, for talking about what he'd lost.

"Now." Anathema nods, as if remembering something important. "I believe you promised me cake the last time I was here."

The assumption being, of course, that he always has cake in the kitchen somewhere. He'd probably be more put out if the assumption wasn't absolutely correct. Though he'd discovered recently that Crowley has something of a sweet tooth as well, so there's been rather more of it in the kitchen than usual

"Did I?" Aziraphale feigns forgetfulness just to see her smile. "That doesn't sound like me."

"You can't promise someone cake and then renege on the deal, Aziraphale," she says firmly.

That does seem deeply unfair of him. He concedes that she is indeed owed cake and waves her deeper inside. Anathema follows him with a laugh.

"But at least think about what I said," she continues. "You can't wait for someone to fall into your lap. If you're looking for a relationship, then you have to at least be willing to be open to the idea of meeting someone new. Whether that's your mysterious new friend, or Martin, whose number I will leave somewhere in an unsubtle fashion, with no pressure attached."

The bell jangles, sharp and angry, behind them, they both turn to look at the firmly closed door.

"I really must get that fixed," Aziraphale murmurs, entirely for show. "I think the screws are loose."

Anathema frowns, seemingly unwilling to dismiss it so easily. Aziraphale reminds himself that she is a practising witch, and if anyone can spot whatever telltale signs a building has when a demon infests the place as deeply as Crowley must have done - well, if anyone can then surely she can.

"Is everything alright in here Aziraphale?" she asks, a careful sort of gentleness in her voice. "Nothing odd bothering you about the place? You seem a little -" She doesn't elaborate of exactly what he seems. But he feels she's leaving space there for a reply, so he takes it.

He fixes a smile on his face, that he hopes looks genuine, and shakes his head.

"No, not at all, it's just been very busy lately, no time to see to minor annoyances, and there are all the books still to be repaired and shelved, place smells a touch mustier because of it, as you can imagine." He decides not to mention the way the air still smells vaguely of charred paper to him too. She'll probably consider that progress. "And, of course, I'm still finding things that don't sit quite the way they used to."

It feels cruel to play on her feelings as a distraction. But whatever suspicion had been creeping beneath her question seems to be pushed aside in favour of sympathy. 

"The place looks great though. They really did amazing work."

"They did," he agrees, relieved that this he can be honest about. "Far better than I feared at the start, I couldn't imagine how it would ever look the same again but - well, it was a surprise." He nods again, happy to have managed so much without it touching anywhere painful. He's had quite enough unexpected bouts of crying in front of other people in the last year.

He extends an arm to gesture her into the back. Discounting the occasional customer it's been almost three weeks since he's had a proper conversation with someone he could offer words back and forth with. A thought which leaves him more than a little pained. He's surprised by how much he relishes the opportunity to converse with someone he knows.

"You must have some tea while you're here too. Let me just put away my shopping."

"Except the cinnamon biscuits, which you're saving for your friend?"

Honestly, it's like she can't help herself.

"Except for those," he agrees, and he decides to hell with it, he lets himself smile. 

Anathema laughs and moves ahead of him, into the small kitchen area, boots lifting to carefully avoid the various piles of books he'd set down as he worked, and the large mess that had fallen due to someone's rather obvious petulance.

"Jealous thing," Aziraphale mutters as he passes the pile, only half chastising. He won't pretend that the thought doesn't warm him, just a touch.

-

Eventually he's alone in the shop again, watching the slow movement of pedestrians passing outside, while dust falls near silently through the streams of sunlight. He feels impossibly content. He can't remember the last time he'd been so relaxed, so willing to let the world slowly move around him, without feeling the ever-present, heavy ache of loneliness, or despair.

Though there is still a petulant air to Crowley's movements through the shop. Solidified after Anathema's not-so-subtle suggestion that he should give her friend, Martin, a call. Which, quite frankly, he would have found horrendously awkward, even if he had been both free and willing to entertain the idea.

"You shouldn't blame Anathema," he says, over a glass of white wine, settling the book he'd been reading against his chest. "She dislikes the thought of me being alone here, especially after everything that happened. I think she has an idea in her head of me here at night, haunting my bookshop like some Victorian ghost, dwelling in lonely misery. Which I believe she finds upsetting, so I can't really fault her for the occasional not so subtle offer to find me someone I might like to spend time with - or who I would find bearable for longer than a brief dinner. Not always romantically either, she thinks I should go on more outings, widen my circle of friends - " He makes a short, amused noise. "Which at the moment is more of a very small line of friends. Though I still don't know why on earth she decided Gabriel would be an appropriate choice."

The shelf at the back makes a steady, thumping noise, as if Crowley had shifted position. Aziraphale imagines something in the manner of a moody slouch.

"You are the only one I currently wish to be intimate with, Crowley," he says quietly. "And I think I have my hands full with you already -"

The words cut off, as he realises that that's the one thing he doesn't have, that he can never have. He'll never put his hands on Crowley, never touch him, never tip his head up to kiss, never laugh at his terrible jokes, never pass him a book, or pull hands through his hair, or do anything lovers can do. He finds himself hoping that Crowley didn't catch the unfortunate phrasing. But the abrupt silence from both the stacks and the backroom, the empty feeling to the main area, leaves him certain that he did.

"Damn it," he mutters, sets down the book he was holding with a thump.

Aziraphale shuts the shop up early. It won't be the first time he's weathered complaints about that. But, honestly, who finds themselves desperately needing a book at four in the afternoon anyway? How could that possibly ever be a matter of life and death? 

He has a late dinner, reads until his eyes refuse to stay open for an entire page, then takes himself to bed.

He'd been hoping, but not really expecting, that Crowley would visit him, after he'd blundered his way over a sore spot to the both of them. But he feels like his eyes have barely been closed for an hour or two, before he's staring, wide awake, down his own body, where the blankets have fallen away from his chest and stomach. Crowley has already made himself at home on the bed, body curving astride the sprawl of one of Aziraphale's thighs. The demon has slipped an overly warm hand beneath his t-shirt, pressing it to his bare skin. He's rarely so bold, mostly keeping his hands to himself, as if he thinks he's not allowed, and Aziraphale's whole body itches to press into the contact, to lay his own hand over it. It's a surprising, but by no means unwelcome, intimacy.

"You're right, I can't even hate her for it," Crowley says fiercely. He's watching his hand, the curve of his wrist under fabric, rather than Aziraphale's face, expression hidden behind a curtain of hair. "She cares about you, and you deserve to be cared for. You deserve someone's attention."

There's an angry noise, and Crowley's head tips enough for Aziraphale to catch a flash of one gleaming eye. Yellow stretches the whole length of it, flecked and speckled with motes of darkness, the pupil impossibly thin.

"She cares enough to find you a _lover_ -" Crowley stops, as if the word hurts more coming out than he'd thought it would. "Someone human, someone you can kiss back, someone you can spend your nights with." There's a bite to the words, and Aziraphale suspects the thought has been bothering him all day. "Has she done that, Aziraphale?" he asks curiously. "Has she found you a lover -" he stops, hisses quietly. "I know I shouldn't ask, I know it's personal, and you don't have to answer, but you told me I could ask you anything. That wanting to know things wasn't wrong. That's the only question I have now, going around in my head, over and over. I wonder if you brought any of them home. If any of them pleased you."

Crowley looks at him, as if hoping to find the answer in his face.

Aziraphale wishes most dearly that he could frown, that he could ease that frantic desperation thrumming through Crowley, that he could protest that he's perfectly happy with the lover he has - at least he hopes that's how Crowley considers himself. The way he kisses Aziraphale always feels eager, always pulls soft noises from Crowley's throat like he never wants to stop. But he makes no overtures, he takes nothing for himself.

Perhaps that will not be true tonight though, because there's a taut, frayed sort of need to Crowley, as he unfolds upwards, and then sinks into Aziraphale's body, presses a kiss to his soft mouth, the quiet sound of a moan dragged away instantly. He searches for something in Aziraphale's eyes, seems frustrated when he doesn't find it.

"Did you touch any of them? Put your hands on them?" The jealousy is easy to read in the words, the quiet, yearning bite of it. Crowley's hand slips out from under his clothes, finds Aziraphale's own hand, resting still in the sheets and briefly tangles their fingers together. "Did you put your hands on them? What noises did you make for them?"

He sounds so pained, as if he hates himself for wanting to know.

Aziraphale wonders if Crowley would be disappointed to learn that none of his dinners, or drinks, with any of Anathema's friends had gone beyond a rather polite exchange of 'must do this again,' and 'lovely to meet you.' Aziraphale has not had a lover for years. There is nothing for the demon to be jealous of. But he _cannot tell him that_.

Crowley slips down his body again, fingertips daring to push under the material of his shirt again, to press into his skin with a quiet noise that sounds hungry, that sets Aziraphale's pulse hammering. He's hardening in his underwear, he can feel the weight of it, the way the velvet-soft skin twitches and shifts. It's not the first time Crowley's kisses have affected him physically. But it's the first time Crowley has pressed into it. The first time he's acknowledged Aziraphale's desire. The first time his own has been so blatant.

Crowley's obvious, hungry attention leaves a warm, hot tangle of arousal clenching inside him.

"Would you make noises for me?" Crowley asks, though it's much softer, lacking the bite from before. It sounds almost desperate.

_As many as you wanted,_ Aziraphale thinks deliriously. _Darling you have no competition, you couldn't have. You are exquisite._

The demon's long hands catch his hips, as he slithers downwards, the movement deeply suggestive, his destination quickly obvious. Crowley hasn't touched him this intimately yet, nothing more than a few lovely, over- enthusiastic kisses, that Aziraphale has always hated the fact he couldn't take part in. A few presses of Crowley's spare weight to Aziraphale's chest or side, that are a brief but blissful suggestion of further intimacy. 

Crowley has certainly never touched him like this, has been very careful not to suggest anything so obviously sexual. Aziraphale simply hadn't known how to give permission, how to encourage him. Crowley had reacted so badly the last time Aziraphale had admitted to being open to touch, to physical affection. The thought of Crowley's reaction if he were any more honest about what he wanted - about what he'd imagined, the things he would let Crowley do to him. He's not sure he could confess to half of it out loud.

Crowley sighs, and the flow of air washes over his clothed erection in a rush of pleasure. Aziraphale can feel it, but he can't react to it in any way. But then that head full of rust-red hair is sinking, settling on the curve of his stomach, where Crowley peers up at him with piercing eyes.

"I want you to dream of me," he says, into the soft give of his skin. The tone of his voice far more pleading than the words. "Me and no one else." 

_I already do_ , Aziraphale wants to tell him. _You have no idea._

"Is that greedy? Is that wrong of me?"

Crowley's eyes lift, yellow-gold in the dark, to hold his own - and then long, sharp-nailed hands slip carefully into Aziraphale's underwear drawing them slowly down his thighs and off. It's the first time Crowley has seen him naked - the first time he's been naked in bed with him, and Aziraphale's blood rushes beneath his skin, aroused beyond measure, alive with it, for all that he's as languid and pliant as a doll. He's so obviously exposed like this, cock stiff and heavy with arousal, flushed red where it sits against his stomach. A lewd display he has no control over, and finds unexpectedly appealing. Crowley makes a low, wounded noise in his throat hands gliding down to touch his spread thighs, to dig his fingers in - and Aziraphale can see the dark flicker of a tongue from his narrow mouth.

There's a pause, tense as a wire.

"Keep your eyes open, angel," Crowley says sharply, shakily. "Or I shall stop."

It sounds like a threat, but there's a desperate sort of urgency to it. A promise that he will stop, that he'll stop if Aziraphale doesn't want this.

When Aziraphale does nothing but stare down at him, Crowley shifts closer. He touches him, circles the solid warmth of his cock with his fingers, which are so careful on his sensitive flesh, learning the shape of him, before squeezing gently. Aziraphale is certain he's incapable of being any more aroused, at being unexpectedly touched by Crowley for the first time, at being eased slowly upright as Crowley leans in, his mouth opening to expose the slick-wet interior with its sharp, white teeth.

And then Aziraphale is sliding inside, stretching Crowley's mouth open, as the demon draws him in, all slippery heat, and curling press of a tongue that isn't entirely human. Its touch twists and flutters repeatedly over the head of Aziraphale's cock, in delicious rasps of sensation. Aziraphale feels himself twitch helplessly in reaction, the startling, sudden movement almost entirely involuntary, and Crowley gives a low, shaky moan, as if Aziraphale had done it on purpose, as if it's encouragement to continue. Aziraphale is happy that at least part of him can make its appreciation of the demon's touch known - 

His thoughts scatter completely when Crowley dips his head, pulling him deep before letting him almost slide free, then sucking in slow, gentle pulls. Aziraphale can do nothing at all but take it, lay in a wash of sensation under it, endure it while his insides boil. He can't share anything of his bliss, save the way he leaves pre-come across the demon's forked tongue.

The rhythm is choppy and unpredictable, which lends the whole thing a ragged, filthy sort of urgency. It's been such a long time since anyone has touched him like this, and Aziraphale wants it, he wants it so desperately he forgets how to breathe. Everything in him tells him to reach out, to touch Crowley, to press his hips into that slow, sucking warmth. But he's caught fast like an insect in amber, watching the deliciously lewd bob of Crowley's head, the desperate clutch of his sharp hands in the fabric of Aziraphale's shirt. The way his quiet noises of pleasure shudder through his skin. 

It's unpractised, more indulgence than skill, but Crowley's enjoying it, that's obvious enough. Which is enough to leave Aziraphale's whole body feeling raw and sensitive, to leave him squirming desperately inside, while the tightening heat of impending orgasm spreads quickly outwards. There's no way to hold it back, no way to chase it, just the slick attention of Crowley's exquisite mouth, the slow pulls of suction and the rough slides that push him in deep. The constant flick of sharp eyes that hold his own, leave him wishing desperately that he could moan Crowley's name, press up with his hips, wind fingers in the demon's glorious hair. Touch his face. Tell him he's beautiful. Tell him he's close - that he's going to come.

It's all so much, and he's in control of none of it.

Until Crowley is sinking to the base, nudging him in through the tightness of his throat, and Aziraphale's orgasm is wrenched out of him before he's even aware that he's reached the edge.

Crowley stills, as if in surprise, as Aziraphale pulses down his throat, and across the back of his tongue, before his eyes drift shut and he simply holds Aziraphale inside, until he starts to soften. Only then does he draw free, slowly release him. His lower lip is wet and red, and there's a smear of saliva on his chin, a line of hair stuck to his cheek. He looks erotic and dishevelled, and sharply real, and Aziraphale desperately wants to know if he's aroused as well, if he found anything in the way of pleasure for himself in the act. If this is something he wants from him, because Aziraphale would be more than happy with that. 

But instead of moving up the bed, instead of touching him, kissing him, as Aziraphale expects him to, instead the demon simply looks horrified, where he's settled awkwardly between Aziraphale's cooling thighs.

"I shouldn't have done that." Crowley's voice is a rough choke of air, mouth curling in misery. "I shouldn't have done that to you, I'm sorry."

The soft, fuzzy bliss of orgasm makes it hard to understand what Crowley means for a very confusing second.

"I was _jealous_ and _angry_ , and I wanted it," Crowley says, and it sounds like an accusation. "And I took it without asking you first. Without knowing if that was something you even wanted from me."

Crowley stares at the sheet he'd pushed hastily down the bed in his eagerness to see him, to better fit himself between Aziraphale's thighs, and he makes a disgusted noise. He stretches out of the space, draws the sheet and blanket back up to Aziraphale's waist, to cover his limp, damp cock, and warm, trembling skin, before drawing away again as if burned. Then Crowley pushes his way back off the bed, the floor creaking beneath his bare feet. 

Aziraphale tries desperately to get the demon to look at him, but he won't, he's entirely lost in his own self-recrimination, much to Aziraphale's quiet horror.

"This makes me no better than a fucking incubus," Crowley says miserably. "No better than one of those savages that sneaks into people's rooms at night and - and forces themselves on sleeping humans, to drain their essence, and their energy. I thought I was better than that, but I'm not. Angel -" He winces, as if he doesn't think he deserves to call him that any more. "Aziraphale, I have no excuses - I won't make any excuses, I did it, I was selfish and I did it."

He still won't look at Aziraphale, as if he's terrified of what he'll see, shuffling backwards into the dark as if he's trying to physically remove himself from the room. He has his hands buried in his own hair, like he's trying to stop it moving, and Aziraphale doesn't know what that means but he knows that he has it all wrong. It wasn't like that. If Crowley would just look at him, if he'd just let Aziraphale reassure him that it's alright - damn it, he's never felt so powerless to stop something awful happening before.

_Crowley, darling, please don't do this._

Crowley has retreated all the way to the mess of books in the corner, half in darkness. A haunting recreation of the first night he came to Aziraphale's room, pining for his company but too afraid to come close, too afraid to touch. That was where he's always belonged, after all, in the darkness.

_Crowley_

"You gave me so much already - I should have." The words are dragging painfully out of Crowley now, a hiss at the edges. "I should have stopped myself. I should have been _better_. But I'm a greedy, worthless demon, just like I told you, just like I've always told you. Everything I thought I was - I don't deserve -"

The room darkens, then brightens abruptly, and Aziraphale finds himself alone, and hopelessly tangled in the sheets, as if he'd thrashed all night trying to make Crowley stay. The sun is streaming rather rudely through the window, telling him that it's a lot later than expected.

"Damn it, Crowley," he says desperately, all the words he should have been able to say burning in his throat.


	4. Chapter 4

Aziraphale pushes his way out of bed and dresses himself, with the hurried air of a man who finds himself in a situation that has spiralled horribly out of control, and from such a lovely starting point too. But he needs a moment to gather himself before he tries to fix this, before he protests whatever nonsense Crowley has convinced himself of.

If the demon will even let him. The shop feels very cold and very bare, in a way it hasn't felt for weeks now, suggesting that Crowley has either pulled himself deep into the shop's liminal spaces, or possibly left the place entirely. Neither of which is particularly helpful right now. The very opposite of comforting in fact. But Aziraphale needs a moment to find the right words. Whatever Crowley had thought of what happened last night, for Aziraphale it had been an unexpected moment of longed for intimacy, arousing beyond measure, and Crowley's reaction had been a confusing and upsetting spear through his memory of it. 

Though part of him can understand why Crowley had reacted the way he had. Aziraphale's inability to take part in it, or to vocally consent to it, does leave them in something of a questionable grey space. This is really something they should have discussed already, that they should have acknowledged at least, the moment that their relationship changed. Aziraphale blames himself entirely for that. Crowley has never been in a relationship before, he's never experienced any of the thrilling highs or crushing lows. It's all new to him, and no matter how difficult it's going to be for Aziraphale he needs to find out what Crowley wants, and to clearly communicate what he wants from Crowley in turn - he should have made a point of asking sooner, this would never have happened if he'd simply _thought_.

He makes himself a very strong cup of tea and carries it into the shop proper. Then drinks half of it before he manages to clear his throat, and his head.

"Crowley, darling, I don't want you to blame yourself for what happened between us last night." He would, of course he would, he already had done. But the more Aziraphale could make himself sound like an active participant the better. "I realise that our relationship is unconventional due to our particular arrangement. That it's uniquely difficult compared to others, the question of consent especially, since our conversations - our communication in general - tends to have a significant delay to it. And I know it's difficult for us to both be in an - an intimate moment together, so to speak. I understand why you felt that you'd taken advantage of me." 

God, for all that he knows he has to say all this, it's so much harder than he'd thought it would be. He's never enjoyed exposing himself like this. 

"But I had thought -" Aziraphale stops, reminds himself to be _clear_. "I had hoped that we were moving towards something in the way of intimacy eventually. Sexual intimacy, I mean, of course, of course I mean that. I knew what that meant, and I knew how difficult it might be."

He wraps both hands round his mug, looks up into the shelves above, the shadowed corners, the towering stacks of books.

"But you hadn't given any indication that you wanted that, suggested it maybe but I was never certain. Though perhaps you didn't feel free to, perhaps it felt like overstepping. I should - I should have asked you." He should have found a way to ask, no matter how awkward and embarrassing it would have been. He would have taken it over the way he's feeling right now. "I should have felt brave enough to ask you. Then perhaps we wouldn't have found ourselves here. With me desperately trying to get you to - "

No, no accusations. Nothing that felt like pressure.

"I know that I had certainly hoped that you wanted me in that way," he says, trying to keep his voice soft. "I've wanted you like that, Crowley, I still want you like that."

Aziraphale stares into his tea for a moment, feeling his cheeks warm at sharing this all out loud, to a room that feels unbearably empty.

"I've thought about you doing that to me before." He forces himself to admit. "I have thought about it, more than once, and I do not feel in any way - in any way violated by your actions. You didn't - heavens I'm trying to phrase this correctly and all my words seem to have deserted me. You didn't do anything I didn't want, that I wouldn't have consented to more firmly if I'd been able. Please remember that you asked for consent, you did, in the only way you were able at the time. You told me that you would stop, you told me you would stop if I didn't look at you."

Aziraphale sighs out a breath at the memory.

"Crowley, how could I possibly have looked at anything else?"

The shop gives him nothing but the sound of wood settling.

"I enjoyed what we did last night, very much, and I find myself deeply troubled by the fact that it caused you so much pain. Strangely guilty too, to be honest, as if my own desires, or my own teasing, had somehow pushed you into it. And if it did -" God, if he did he would never forgive himself. "If it did, please know that I'm sorry, I never meant to push, I would never push you, like that. But, please, if you think you somehow - somehow assaulted me in a jealous rage." Aziraphale stops, because it sounds so awful to say, and because he can't help but feel like that's exactly what Crowley will think. "I know how you can be, magnifying your own faults, your own idea of the sort of demon you are. I know how you punish yourself, love. But you are not that sort. Never that sort. Please don't ever think that."

Aziraphale sighs, frustrated at the way it still feels like he's speaking to no one. But he soldiers on regardless.

"I don't feel like there's anything to forgive, but if you need to hear it then I'll offer that as well. I forgive you. Though I want you to know that the experience for me was nothing but unexpected lovely, and deeply arousing. But I hope that I haven't - that I haven't somehow -" Ruined something? Broken the trust they had? Assumed like an idiot that things could progress naturally, rather than at a careful and clearly agreed upon pace? His tea doesn't have an answer for him. "And I hope that you know I would like you to touch me again, if that's something that you want. I hope that next time I can somehow, in some way, make you feel like I did last night. That I can touch you as well." Because Crowley deserves touch too, he's allowed to want it. But Aziraphale can't make himself say that, not when it's something that he can't give to him.

Aziraphale decides he will take his own swift and obvious reddening with the bravery Crowley does deserve.

"Now, I have a lunch date with Anathema today. I hope you take the opportunity to think about what I've said, to come back to me - _please come back to me_ \- and talk to me about this. Because we do need to talk about this. God, I hope you're here listening to me, and not off somewhere wallowing in guilt, or this is all for bloody nothing."

-

"- and so now I'm sitting on two hundred copies of his new book, with his smug, grinning face on the back, mocking me for my bad taste and poor judgement." Anathema looks thoroughly miserable, as if she thinks the whole thing was her fault entirely. "And worse, we're forced to stock them in the shop, or I'll be accused of letting my personal feelings interfere with my work. There's a whole stack of them by the till." She stabs her fork into her pasta. "This is my punishment, this is what I deserve." 

Aziraphale wipes his mouth with a napkin, face creasing in sympathy.

"Oh, don't say that, you can't be blamed for any of it, surely." Hadn't they all encountered someone who seemed perfectly lovely to start with, only for the onion skin to slowly peel away, revealing something far more unpleasant, or downright rotten, beneath. "You weren't to know know what a cad he was." 

Anathema exhales something that might be a laugh at the word choice, then shakes her head. 

"No, you're letting me off. I feel like it should have been obvious somehow. I should have known, I should have been able to see it coming. Something to look back on, that could make me go 'ah, of course, I should have known, he was clearly evil incarnate all along.'" She throws up her hands. "There should have been signs. I'm usually good with signs." She does have, it has to be said, something of a talent for knowing what's going to happen before it does. Which, Aziraphale can imagine, leaves her whole situation doubly frustrating. Her expression is so clearly asking him for an answer, but Aziraphale honestly doesn't know if she wants him to agree that there were signs Dominic was up to no good, and make her feel worse, or reassure her that his camouflage was flawless and she had no way of knowing.

The truth is he doesn't know the man well enough to say for sure, he'd only met him a few times in passing, and remembered very little about him. So he decides to be honest.

"You made the best decision you could at the time, it wasn't your fault you didn't have all the information."

Anathema finishes the last of her pasta and sets the fork down.

"What bothers me the most, is I'm not usually so spontaneous - " She cuts herself off. "No, that's a lie, I'm never spontaneous. And the one time I decide to be, it comes back and bites me on the ass."

Aziraphale wonders whether that's simply bad luck, or whether they really do bring it upon themselves.

"I thought you were very brave," Aziraphale says sympathetically. 

"You're being polite," she grumbles. "I was an idiot."

"A brave idiot," Aziraphale allows over his tea. Which puts a reluctant smile on her face.

"Enough about my disaster. What about you? How are things with you and Mr Cinnamon Biscuits?"

Aziraphale finds himself blushing, completely against his will. Which strikes him as ridiculous for a man his age, but something about the name - and the fact that Crowley has indeed been known to smell ever so slightly of cinnamon - somehow tugs the reaction into life. He hopes to God that Anathema misses it.

"Crowley," he says quietly. It's the first time he's given the demon's name to anyone else. The first time he's said it out in the open, and he doesn't expect it to thrill him so much. He doesn't expect it to feel so much like making the secret thing between them real. A clandestine affair made into a relationship - though he realises he's made it sound rather sordid there, when it feels anything but. A secret relationship pulled unexpectedly into the light, so it can bloom - God no, that's almost worse. "His name is Crowley, and he's very nice." Though he suspects Crowley would object to the word, would protest that he's a demon and Aziraphale can't go around describing him as _nice_ to people.

"So it is a thing now." Anathema pushes her empty plate to one side, as if she's going to need her full concentration, and more elbow room, for this. "Did you finally cave to his charms?"

He can't help the short bark of unexpected laughter.

"It was more like him caving to mine," Aziraphale admits awkwardly.

Anathema's eyebrows go up behind her glasses in surprise, before her face opens in a significantly bigger smile.

"Oh, you've caught yourself a man of good taste then."

"Stop it," he protests. But she looks so delighted he can't bring himself to be firm enough to puncture her enthusiasm.

"No, this is good," she decides. "It's good for you, and for him, obviously, I'm not even going to tease you because I'm happy for you. And I would love to meet him some time. I am going to meet him sometime, right?"

Aziraphale can't help the unhappy twist inside him, at that gently enthusiastic question. Because it is, of course, absolutely impossible for Crowley to meet anyone. For Aziraphale to share his beautiful, intelligent, witty lover with anyone else. He cannot, and he never will.

"We still have some things to work out." He feels compelled to say. "We're very different people, and there are of course, obstacles to our relationship. But isn't that true of every relationship?"

Anathema's smile turns into a frown as he talks, and once he's finished she makes a disappointed noise.

"You already had a fight." She doesn't phrase it as a question, as if his tentative explanation had been some sort of code he was unaware of.

"It was more of a misunderstanding," he corrects, reaching for a way to explain it without being too personal. "He did something spontaneous without thinking and is now convinced that he overstepped. I attempted to reassure him but I'm not sure if he got my message."

"Boundaries at the beginning of a relationship are so important, but it's not always a conversation that's easy to have," she offers sympathetically, then sighs. "Spontaneity, really not our friend at the moment, huh?"

Aziraphale sighs. "I'm not sure how people manage to live their lives from one hastily made decision to the next," he admits, because this is one thing they definitely agree on. And it's a thought he's had many times over the years, as he'd watched people accept change without a care, or upend their whole lives on a whim. The very idea of it had been absolutely terrifying to him. "Perhaps we're just not very good at it. Perhaps there's a knack we're not quite getting."

She pulls a serious face and nods.

"Maybe we do need more practice." She pretends to think about it for a moment, then smiles "Why not start now. We could spontaneously order dessert?"

Aziraphale can't resist a brief wriggle of amused delight.

"Why not, lets take the risk."

-

When he returns to the bookshop, unlocks the door and steps inside, he's brought quite abruptly to a stop, keys still half in the door.

The record player in the back is quietly playing, and the towering shelves and low tables are quite miraculously free of dust.

The air feels light and warm on his skin, and there's something soft and tentative to the quiet, an apology in every hang of sunlight, a plea to forgive Crowley, not just for his actions, but for leaving, for not giving Aziraphale the opportunity to react, for shutting himself away and refusing to listen.

"You are quite forgiven, darling," Aziraphale tells him, utterly overwhelmed with relief. "I've been so worried about you."

-

When he takes himself to bed he hopes - well, he leaves enough room on one side of the bed, and pretends that the thought doesn't warm him inside. He knows they have things to talk about, he knows that it may not be easy. But the simple fact is he wants to see him, he wants to reassure himself that things between them are not bruised beyond repair.

But when Aziraphale opens his eyes, mid-way through the night, Crowley isn't over his body, instead he's curled into his side, knees drawn up, fingers light and careful on his wrist. Aziraphale can feel the slow rush of breathing against the side of his face, can feel the way Crowley's fingers slide slowly between his own.

"I'm sorry," Crowley says quietly. Then makes a noise before Aziraphale can even think an objection to the words. "I know you told me I didn't do anything wrong, but I'm a demon, Aziraphale. I know where the lines are, and I stepped over them. Just trust me on that, please. I shouldn't have done what I did. I should have gotten your consent first. I should have asked you before I stripped you naked. I thought I was better than that, and the fact that I wasn't - that I wasn't when it was _you_."

He's quiet for a long time, longer than he's ever been silent while they're together. Aziraphale understands suddenly why Crowley has tucked himself where he can't see him. Though he wishes that he could lace their fingers together properly, reassure Crowley that he's listening. That he understands Crowley needs to talk without being seen. Though whether it's because it will be easier for him that way, or because he doesn't want Aziraphale to look at him, he's not sure.

"I'm very lucky that you forgave me. I was so angry with myself for what I did. Angry at how much I enjoyed it -" The words break there, just for a second. "And I know it's something we should talk about, that we need to talk about. I'm the one that has the power here, and I can't -" He stops again. "I won't do that again. You need to tell me what you want. You need to tell me what I can do, and what I can't. You need to be the one, because you can't move Aziraphale, you can't move when I'm with you, you have no way to say no to me, and it scares me sometimes."

There's a harsh noise of amusement.

"Though you can't share that around. I'm a demon, I can't have you going around telling people I'm scared of things."

Aziraphale blinks very slowly, and imagines he can squeeze Crowley's fingers. _Of course not, darling._ But he's not even going to protest that the demon is fussing, because he understands that Crowley's right. There's a messy issue of consent to their whole relationship, one that he dismissed far too easily. It wouldn't have taken much for the situation the other night to have turned out quite differently.

"You are - important to me," Crowley says thickly. "The most important thing I have, and if I do something that you don't want, something you want me to stop. You have to look away from me, or shut your eyes, let me know somehow. You have to let me know. I can't touch you unless you promise me that."

Aziraphale will, he'll remember and he'll promise as soon as he can speak again.

Crowley takes a breath, sighs it out.

"You were so beautiful, you were amazing, and - and if you want it, the next time it will be right. It will be for the both of us."

Aziraphale's fingers prickle pleasantly when Crowley squeezes them. He wants to squeeze them back, _he wants to squeeze them back_ , to tell him that of course it will be. 

Crowley's head tips against his own, and Aziraphale feels the pressure, feels how much Crowley wants to curl an arm around him and slide in close, but he doesn't. He just breathes there for a long moment, before easing away.

"Now, I want to talk about Arthur Conan Doyle," he says firmly. "Because I have a lot of thoughts about Sherlock Holmes."

He lays a kiss against Aziraphale's cheek and stretches into his line of sight. A fold of limbs and long, dragging hair. When he lifts his head to look at Aziraphale, there's the smudge of a smile on his face.

Aziraphale wishes dearly that he could smile back.

-

When the next week proves itself to be as slow as the last, Aziraphale digs in the shelving by the door, to read Crowley something thick and well-thumbed, with a speeding car on the front, and the promise of dastardly villains and daring escapes. A fact which Crowley seems both amused and deeply touched by.

Customers come infrequently, but Aziraphale finds his mood so light that they barely register as an annoyance. His smiles feel a little more genuine, his suggestions to prospective buyers a touch more enthusiastic and helpful than they usually are. He sells a few paperbacks he's not overly attached to. He feels both quite unlike himself, and more like himself than he's ever been. He doesn't really understand it, but finds himself unwilling to question it.

By Saturday, the feeling has settled into a particular sort of comforting warmth, that has him talking to Crowley through a light dinner, then going through the motions of sharing a bottle of wine. Even if Crowley's glass will be quite unpleasant by the time he's fully formed within the shop. He'll drink it anyway though, because Aziraphale poured it for him. He'd tried to explain once that he couldn't take physical form while anyone around him was awake. Which seemed less like a job description and more like some sort of intolerable punishment to Aziraphale.

Crowley has been very careful since the night he used his mouth on him. His touches are genuine but they don't linger, and are always above the waist. His kisses are indulgent but he rarely presses himself into Aziraphale's body, as had been his clear preference before. As if even with Aziraphale's reassurance he still didn't trust himself, as if he's afraid of what he might do. Though he clearly still wants him. Aziraphale can tell in every slow grip of hands, in the way his eyes will trail to his mouth, in the noises Crowley makes when he curves into him, when he laughs and kisses the bend of Aziraphale's neck. 

Aziraphale has never in his life felt so desired, and so terribly frustrated. 

He gets the distinct impression that Crowley is waiting for him this time.

He corks the bottle of wine after only a few glasses, rinses his own and sets it on the drainer. Then he takes himself upstairs, much earlier than usual, into his bedroom, which is filled with boxes and books, antique lamps and small tables. He hopes - he hopes though he's not brave enough to say, that perhaps it isn't just his bedroom any more.

"I may sleep tonight," Aziraphale says, as casually as he can manage, removing his glasses and folding them carefully, before laying them on the bedside table. 

He opens the buttons on his waistcoat and slips it free, hangs it up with an unusual amount of care. Crowley had asked for direction, and Anathema had suggested that he be honest about what he wanted. Which seems so simple when said out loud. It seems so obvious and natural. It's what words were invented for, after all. He should know that better than anyone. But actually going through with it was another matter entirely. 

He's never had to be the bold one.

"I'm going to undress," he continues slowly. "And I'm not going to wear anything to bed, and if you wish to - if you wish to kiss me, to touch me, to put your hands or your mouth on me, then you have my consent."

The air in the room seems suddenly much tighter than it did before, as if it's hanging on his every word.

"I have dreamed about you more than I've ever dreamed about anyone else. There is no one else, darling, and I want you to touch me. I trust you to touch me."

He works on the sleeves of his shirt, popping the buttons through and drawing his arms free. The room is warm enough that he's perfectly comfortable bare. He imagines that he's being watched and finds he doesn't mind at all.

"If you wish to -" He stops and pulls open the drawer by the bed, sets the bottle he'd bought today on the polished wood. "If you wish to have me like a lover, then you have my consent," he says clearly.

He swallows, feels both his ears pop, as if the pressure in the room was briefly unbearable.

"If you wish to penetrate me, or to take your pleasure from me, to have me - ah - sexually, in whatever way pleases you, any way at all, then I consent." He removes his trousers, folds them neatly and lays them carefully on the chair by the wardrobe. 

"I consent, Crowley."

He strips his underwear free, until he's completely naked.

"I consent."


	5. Chapter 5

It's almost impossible to be aware of yourself in sleep. Often the moment of waking is fuzzy and difficult to pinpoint, unless it happens sharply from a nightmare, or to a sudden loud noise.

Aziraphale is aware, all at once, of his naked body lying in the bed, of the feel of it beneath his curled fingers, the way his legs are relaxed, heels rolled outwards so they lay open. The pillows are soft beneath him, the drape of the sheet light and faintly clinging. Though, as always, he's helpless to react to any of the sensations, to change the position he's in, to even tense inside his own skin. It's a quiet, strange stillness that's become almost comforting. For all that he feels far more indecent than usual tonight.

His eyes are already open.

The room isn't as dark as it was at the beginning. He has a small, salt lamp that he leaves on all night now, a gentle orange glow that picks out every shadowed corner of the room. Without being so bright that it makes sleeping difficult. Useful for someone who's battled insomnia on and off for the last six months. More useful for someone who finds themself with a paralysis demon as a frequent nightly visitor. Because it hadn't taken Aziraphale long to decide that he wanted to _see_ Crowley, he wanted his angles and hard curves and long limbs picked out in soft light. He wanted to see his smile, the flex and tighten of his pupils. The way his mouth scrunches when he's telling Aziraphale that his carefully considered opinion on a book is wrong. Aziraphale wants to see all of it. Because he never gets to see him anywhere else.

There's a quiet stretch of time where there's no one in his bedroom but him, no sound but his slow, even breathing. There's no shape over him in the bed, no flash of serpent eyes, not even a drift of hair. 

Until a long, narrow shape slowly slips out of the empty space beside him, moves until he can make out Crowley's face beside the bed. The fall of hair that's long and usually restless in his presence is, for once, strangely still.

"Did you mean it?" Crowley asks. He seems nervous to approach the bed, hands twisting through the hair that rests by his thighs. "Angel, tell me you meant it?" 

Aziraphale leaves his eyes open, fixes them on that familiar face and does not move them an inch. Eventually all the air escapes from Crowley's chest, as if he's forgotten how to hold it in. He slinks forward, slips into the bed with him, one hand on his face, turning it towards him so he can kiss the soft stillness of Aziraphale's mouth.

"I thought I'd gone too fast for you," Crowley says quietly. "That I'd wanted too much from you, been greedy, ruined everything."

_Never_ , Aziraphale thinks at him desperately. He can't speak but some part of it must come through, because Crowley's hand curves on the side of his face, thumb sliding on the skin, before he leans down and kisses him again.

"I can't believe you, you reckless thing. You gave me permission to do anything to you," Crowley breathes into his mouth. "Anything at all. _Aziraphale_ , if I was any other demon -" His rough exhale sounds admonishing and guilty. "We're the one's who're supposed to tempt you. We're the ones who're supposed to make ourselves irresistible. Do you have any idea what you do to me? Do you have any idea what listening to you offer yourself to me did to me?"

The hand that had been resting gently on Aziraphale's stomach slips down a little, touches the trail of hair that leads lower, follows it with his fingers to the rapidly hardening line of Aziraphale's cock. His eyes fix on Aziraphale's a quick, uncertain flick from one to the other. Before he sighs, fingers stretching down, touching him.

"I want so many things," Crowley admits, hand slipping lower to fully curl around the weight of his erection. Aziraphale can feel the press and stroke of his fingers, and he throbs against them. "Can I really have them?"

He keeps his eyes on Aziraphale's, as if part of him is still waiting for judgement, for protest. When he finds none it seems to unravel him completely. He's shifting up on his knees crawling over Aziraphale's body to kiss him again, and his mouth is shaky and eager, the rush of breath over Aziraphale's face fast and heated.

"Can I straddle you?" Crowley hisses it out like even the thought of it is too enticing to imagine. "Would you like that? Can I have you inside my body? Can I push down onto you, and touch you, and kiss you, and call you mine?"

God, the _thought_ of it.

_Always, Crowley, anything_. Aziraphale blinks, very slowly, then follows every line of Crowley's face.

Crowley sways hurriedly upright, hands dropping to pull at the dark buttons on his breeches, to slither his legs free of them and drop them beside the bed. It's the first time Aziraphale has seen him nude, and Crowley pauses, as if he seems to realise as much, draws his hair slowly out of the way, and eases his thighs open.

His hips are angular and beautiful, the hair around his groin the same colour as the hair spilled over the sheets, his cock is slim and lovely, just like the rest of him, and already stiffly aroused, curving upwards above the rounded swell of his balls. Aziraphale stares so long his eyes water, stares until they ache inside their sockets. His demon is an absolute vision.

Only when he blinks does Crowley cautiously move over him.

"I've never done this in a physical body before," he says, somewhere between nervous and apologetic, hands gentle on Aziraphale's waist. "You'll be my first lover."

Aziraphale feels all the air escape him on a sigh, so heavy it's almost audible. The enormity of it seems unreal.

The sheet is drawn from his body slowly, leaving him prickly with arousal and finally bare to Crowley's gaze - and gaze he does, for so long that Aziraphale feels self-conscious. Until Crowley's hair slides back over his shoulders, framing where he's a long stretch of naked skin and curving rises of bone, cock jutting forward, reddened and eager, as he lifts a knee to straddle Aziraphale's waist.

Crowley's eyes drift shut at the first press of their bodies together, at the first drag of bare skin against bare skin. One long, careful roll of hips has his thighs pulling in, and he gives a quiet moan, hands spreading on Aziraphale's chest in a pressing wave of delicious heat.

"Is this alright?" he asks, the softest shake in his voice. "Aziraphale, is this alright?"

Aziraphale blinks at him, and imagines he can feel the edge of his mouth smiling.

Crowley's soft noise tells him that he understands.

"I thought about this," he breathes on a moan. "So many times. You're so lovely, how could I think about anything else? Every night, seeing you spread out on your bed, just for me." Crowley touches him, slowly and indulgently, fingers trailing the slight rises of his ribs, the smooth skin at his waist, the sensitive peaks of his nipples. Aziraphale has never been touched like something precious and new before, and it leaves him aching inside and out, cock pulsing sharply with want. "Some of my thoughts were obscene," Crowley continues. "And I thought you would hate me for them. I thought of us doing all the things I've never done, things I've never wanted from anyone else." There's the slowest grind of his bare arse into Aziraphale's groin, a tease of pressure that leaves a puff of air escaping his mouth, a wordless, begging sort of madness filling him as he watches Crowley move, testing his body against Aziraphale's. "The thought that you might have been thinking them too. Do you know what that does to me?"

_Tell me,_ Aziraphale pleads inside his own head. _Tell me you've wanted this as much as I have._

Crowley leans in, kisses him again. Then shifts down to mouth at this throat, at the curve of his shoulder, the rise of a nipple, as if everything is worthy of attention. All Aziraphale can see is the spread of his hair, the curve of his back, a stretch of his thigh, and his long bare feet. But he can feel it all, he can feel the warmth of Crowley's mouth, the gentle dig of his fingers, the way his forked tongue drags curiously across his skin.

It's the sweetest thing he's ever experienced.

Crowley stretches upright again, mouth wet.

"I want you, Aziraphale, I always have, you have no idea how much."

Clearly too much to keep talking, because Crowley's reaching for the bottle, lifting it from the bedside table and reading it curiously, before uncapping it and making a noise when it coats his fingers in cool, slick lubricant.

"So we oil up like two machine parts then?" Crowley says, with a soft, shaken laugh. "Fit ourselves together and then work at each other until we're a sweaty, satisfied mess?" For all his nervous words he's clearly eager for it. 

Aziraphale watches him warm the oil on his fingers. He can feel the tension in Crowley's thighs, the slight tremble of his hand, the way his toes curl in the sheets. Nerves or excitement, or maybe both.

"I've seen this done," Crowley tells him. "More times than I can remember. But I've never done it myself, never been part of it before. I think I have the logistics down though." Crowley looks up at him for a moment. "Not that I wouldn't like you to do this for me, angel," he admits. "If you wanted to."

Something in Aziraphale's throat clicks. A gasp of air gone wrong. Because he does want to, he wants to spread Crowley open, slip his fingers inside, hear the noises he made.

"Tell me if you want that too. Tell me how you would do it, so I -" His voice breaks into a laugh. So he could do it the same way, Aziraphale suspects that's how that sentence ends.

Aziraphale will write him a novel of all the things he wants, all the things he'd like to see Crowley do to himself, all the things he'd let Crowley do to him.

Crowley's wet fingers move curiously underneath himself - Aziraphale can't see but he can hear the surprised, curious noises, he can feel the push of his hips and the swaying movement of the demon's arm. He watches in sharp, hungry jealousy, as Crowley's yellow eyes fall half shut, he watches the way his stiff cock sways indecently when he finds a rhythm, when he switches from two fingers to three, before giving a shivery noise of impatience and dropping the bottle in the sheets.

He gives Aziraphale's cock a series, of slow, indulgent strokes with his slick hand, that if he were completely in control would have pulled a helpless shudder, and a noise of startled pleasure out of Aziraphale. Then a gentle, curious exploration of his balls with the same slick hand. Before Crowley is impatiently shuffling forward on his knees, holding himself open and positioning Aziraphale's cock where he's slippery and hastily stretched, then slowly bearing down.

His anus is almost painfully tight, a vice of heated pressure that he works down Aziraphale's glistening cock in careful, but greedy pushes. Crowley hisses sharply, more than once, though there's a shaky delight to it, rather than a strained displeasure. As if every sensation thrills him beyond words. Aziraphale watches every beautiful line of Crowley's body stretching and adjusting to being filled, thighs slowly tensing and swaying outwards, as he moves his weight, as he slowly sinks. Until Aziraphale is buried all the way inside. He finds it immediately overwhelming, and he throbs and aches inside his skin, feeling every breath of it. Unable to react to any of it. 

Crowley moans astride him, legs at awkward angles, face open and stunned, as if he needs a moment to accept the fact that they're joined.

"I didn't know you would feel like this," Crowley croaks out. "It's so much more than I thought it would be." 

He huffs a laugh at the unintentional joke. Then gently curves over on a moaning sigh, and awkwardly presses his mouth to Aziraphale. 

"Did you want this from me? Did you picture us like this? Did you think about being this deep inside me?"

_Constantly,_ Aziraphale wants to tell him. _I was almost ashamed of how often I thought of it._

Crowley shifts his legs until he has purchase on his folded knees. Then he lifts Aziraphale's hands from the sheets, brings them to his narrow waist and holds them there. It's unexpected and _perfect_ , the feel of Crowley's smooth, warm skin, the way it moves so fluidly between his numb fingers. Something in Aziraphale's chest aches, at the desperation to actually be holding him, to be touching him, to be moving his beautiful form in ways that would bring him pleasure. He thinks Crowley feels it too, because he presses Aziraphale's fingers harder into his skin, as if he wants to be gripped tight. As if he wants - desperately wants - Aziraphale to hold him.

Crowley watches his face carefully as he slowly starts to move, waiting for any flicker of uncertainty, of unwillingness. When there's none, when there's nothing but Aziraphale's intent focus, and the slow rush of his breathing, Crowley shivers gently and rocks down into him a little harder.

"Tell me," he says roughly, something desperate in his voice. "Tell me tomorrow how this feels for you. Tell me how you pictured me. Tell me what you wanted, tell me the things you thought about us doing together. Tell me how to touch myself for you."

_Crowley, you can't say things like that._ Aziraphale is not sure he's going to survive this.

Crowley's sharp nails bite into the skin of his forearms, as he presses down, grinds into his lap with his spare, sharp edges that somehow feel fantastically raw and beautiful. He's losing what little caution he had at the start, and Aziraphale can feel his quick, shuddering clenches of surprised pleasure, can hear the broken, bitten-off noises that are strained and hungry and _desperate_. Changing his position, chasing unexpected sensation. It seems the demon has a prostate, if his squirming, repetitive pushes down onto Aziraphale's cock are to be believed.

It makes something hot clench in Aziraphale, and then quiver in frustrated impotence. 

"Oh, this is -" Crowley moans a laugh. "Angel, this is so good. I always knew it would be. I knew I couldn't feel anything with you that wouldn't be amazing."

Aziraphale's hands slip down to his thighs, and Crowley leaves them there, hums approval at the weight of them, the way they shift with his movements. He drops one of his hands to his own cock, squeezing and pulling, mouth opening for much louder sounds, gasps and hisses and the occasional moan of Aziraphale's name.

"It feels like you're touching me," Crowley strangles out.

Aziraphale can't help the the soft, whimpering sound his throat makes, watching every impossibly erotic moment of it while frozen in stillness. He feels adrift in sensation as the demon folds into him on a groan, hair falling in looping waves around him, and against him, as his mouth presses to Aziraphale's, opens in a moan between kisses, as his hips rock and sway and push down. Until all rhythm is lost, the sweet, aching bliss of it brought to a climax by Crowley's startled, messy noise of surprised pleasure. A streak of wetness splashes Aziraphale's curved stomach, once, twice, Crowley's hand working slowly to pull the rest from him in drops and thin trails.

"Fuck, Aziraphale."

Aziraphale nearly tips over as well, until Crowley slows, and shudders to a stop.

Caught right on the edge Aziraphale feels splintered, pinned in place, and it's _glorious_.

The demon pants in delight for a long moment. When he lifts his head, looks for Aziraphale, his eyes are blown wide, pupils curving and dark, open as wide as he's ever seen them. If Aziraphale wasn't in love with him already, he thinks this would be the moment that he fell.

"Angel." Crowley sounds amazed and grateful, voice almost unbearably soft. Before he seems to realise that Aziraphale is still painfully hard inside him, the desperately throbbing ache of him still held tight between his clenching walls.

Crowley gives a long, breathy sigh of apology, and starts moving again, body still shuddering and sensitive. But far from being too much it seems to thrill him, in a way that Aziraphale finds incredibly appealing. The way he stretches and breathes and says his name over and over. There's something about being unable to change the demon's pace, unable to push up, or pull him down, unable to do anything but take the sensation Crowley gives to him. Aziraphale is helpless beneath Crowley's search for pleasure, moving to his whims, unable to do anything but please him. Until he's clenching up inside, spilling his own orgasm deep into that squeezing, shifting space he's buried in, while Crowley keeps moving through it, leaving Aziraphale powerless to pull away, to resist, everything so sensitive it burns. It's an almost unbearable ecstasy. 

He feels Crowley fall into him, feels the cool trail of his hair, feels the demon call him beautiful against his parted lips. He feels the press of his hands to his face. The pound of Crowley's infernal heart against his own.

_I love you_.

"Angel, that was perfect -"

Aziraphale blinks -

The next time he opens his eyes his body twitches alive, loosing a groan of delight at the memory, as his legs move, arms stretching, fingers grasping at nothing in the sheets. Aching to curl his hands around Crowley's long, narrow limbs, his smooth waist, the waterfall drift of his hair. Desperate to touch him.

His body is clean, and he suspects it's due to some demonic power, rather than a wet cloth.

But Crowley is, of course, nowhere to be seen.

"You're beautiful," he tells the empty room, voice rough like the words had been in his throat for hours. He hates that he can't see Crowley's eyes widen, pupils narrowing in pleasure. But he can't help the quiet joy at the thought of it. "You are impossibly beautiful, and that was the most amazing experience of my life. Never doubt that every second I spend with you is precious to me."

-

Crowley is there after that, always there in the moments between wake and sleep, in his bed, his long, thin body pressed tight to Aziraphale's side, or curled over his chest, hair spreading and dragging, or sliding against his skin and over the sheets. For the long stretch of minutes between sleeping and waking the demon touches him like a lover, with slow sweeps of his burning hands, mouth a flaring press of heat to Aziraphale's throat and jaw. As he murmurs words from the books he's read, asking questions, offering scathing comments on the customers of the day, giving his low, throaty laugh that rumbles all the way through him. It feels like something they can keep, something they can have.

Other times Crowley's curled between his open thighs, mouth wet and hot on the length of him. Or he's stretched over him in the sheets, long legs open round Aziraphale's waist, or pressed between his heavy, spread thighs, working the burning heat of himself down onto Aziraphale's cock, or deep into Aziraphale's body, whispering his name, drawing his hands up to his waist and pressing them there as he lifts and sinks and pushes, seeking pleasure for them both. 

Aziraphale is desperately, hopelessly in love with him.


	6. Chapter 6

"I'm sorry?" For a moment Aziraphale thinks he's misheard.

Anathema is looking at him over her cup, but there's nothing teasing in her face, if anything she looks uncomfortable but determined.

"I asked if Crowley was involved with the occult?" she repeats. 

Aziraphale had indeed heard her perfectly well the first time.

"What an odd question." He can't think of anything else to say. Though his heart is pounding unpleasantly fast. Involved? No, no, Crowley _is_ the occult, for all intents and purposes. His involvement usually kept at a safe distance from Aziraphale, which is exactly how he'd chosen to phrase it. "What makes you ask?"

"I wasn't going to say anything, I know I shouldn't be prying, but the bookshop feels very -" She looks as if she doesn't really want to say it out loud. "Well, sometimes it feels a little _close_ , oppressive, in a certain way, a way that's familiar to me." The tense quiet that comes after the explanation tells Aziraphale that it's not familiar in a way that she's happy about.

Aziraphale sets his cup down in its saucer, rather harder than he means to. Though none of the people seated at nearby tables react to the noise.

"Anathema -"

"I'm not judging, Aziraphale," she says quickly, expression almost apologetic now. "I'm not going to make a speech about the dangers of people abusing the occult for personal gain, you're smart enough to know all that already. I just want to make sure that you _know_."

Of course he does, _of course_. Though it occurs to him immediately that Anathema would have no way of knowing that, and she cares about him. She's one of the few people who genuinely cares about him. The reminder of which goes a long way towards soothing the quiet panic in his chest.

"I know," he says quietly. He struggles for a way to explain. He can't tell her the truth, at least not yet. She wouldn't understand. "Crowley may have a history, an unpleasant history - I understand that they're painful memories for him, experiences that he prefers not to talk about, and I don't want to push. But he...spent the majority of his early years in a very dark place. Where certain things were expected of him." 

"Oh." Anathema's voice is entirely different now. A frown pulling down behind her glasses.

"But I'm aware that he's still -" Aziraphale stamps down hard on the words 'a demon,' feeling a touch adrift but so desperate to get something out, a spill of words that feel like they've been in his chest for weeks. "He's still part of that world." It's not a lie, Crowley has left the bookshop several times for assignments that Aziraphale has not asked about, and is quite sure it's best if he doesn't. "He's still connected to it, and always will be. Practising isn't really the right word, and 'tainted by association' feels cruel, doesn't it?"

Anathema looks suddenly horribly uncomfortable, as if she'd been expecting something very different. Aziraphale isn't entirely sure what impression he's given her. Perhaps that Crowley was raised by satanists, or that he was dragged into the worship of powerful occult forces by his parents. It feels more like half the truth than a lie, but he still feels guilty for it. How close is he supposed to skirt the truth, when the truth is...so much more bloody demonic?

He drinks half his tea, though it's still far too hot, possibly to stop himself from talking, but then he finds himself setting it down and talking anyway. 

"He doesn't want to be what any of them are though. He wants to be different, he wants to be better, he deserves the chance to be better, it's just -"

"Aziraphale, I understand." Anathema says quietly, soothing his conflicted fight for an explanation. "The things that are comfortable and familiar to us, the places we've always known, they aren't always good for us, they aren't always safe places, but it's still difficult to leave them behind. We both know that."

Aziraphale isn't sure he deserves her sympathy, when he's finding creative ways to lie, just so he can talk about this. Just so he can _share_ something, with someone, for once.

"Oh, believe me, Crowley would understand your concern, expect it even, he might even think you were right. That he couldn't help but be a bad influence on me. That I deserved better than him. And I hate that I can't reach out, can't take his hand -" He stops, fiddles with the spoon set down in front of him. "It's difficult to reassure him sometimes," he finishes. Which is honest enough to hurt, and Anathema must see it too, because she slips her hand across the table and squeezes his fingers - and that pushes him far too close to crying in public, but he appreciates it, he does.

"You can talk to me, you know, I won't ask if you'd rather I didn't, but you can tell me anything you need to. It's not like you haven't done it enough for me. And maybe I could help you, both of you, somehow - I know you don't really believe in any of this -"

Aziraphale laughs, very softly, because he would have agreed with her a few months ago, and now he's in love with a demon. The sound of it is enough for her to go quiet though. She blinks at him for a second, before giving a shaky exhale that sounds surprised. 

"It's hard to let go of the people who turn our whole world upside down," she says finally, as if realising that there's far more to this conversation she's missing. She's so much smarter than she gives herself credit for, and he wishes desperately that he could just share everything.

"He's certainly done that," Aziraphale agrees, then decides she deserves more than that. "And I don't regret a moment of it. Not a moment since I met him."

"Do you trust yourself to make good decisions?" Anathema asks quietly. "Where he's concerned."

Aziraphale blinks, surprised by the question.

"I - " He shuts his mouth and seriously considers it, because if nothing else Anathema deserves that. "I do," he realises eventually.

"That surprises you." Anathema tips her head to the side, her expression is strangely pleased. 

"A little," he admits. "But, well, Crowley has been encouraging me to be braver than I used to be, to ask for what I want, to speak up when I feel uncomfortable."

"He sounds like an absolute villain," Anathema says, with a wry smile.

Aziraphale laughs, he can't help himself.

"He's much kinder than you'd expect, much softer than you'd expect. Even if he would hate me for saying that. Though he still expects to be judged, for what he is. He still expects to be called a monster, for where he comes from, for what he was supposed to be, supposed to do. Sometimes he still blames himself for things that were never his fault. And I always tell him he's better than that -"

Anathema finishes her coffee, gives him a moment, which he's very grateful for.

"That sounds lonely," she tells him. "Maybe it was a good job he met you." She sets the cup down and pushes it aside, then folds her hands on the table. "Though if he hurts you I will curse him, I'm not even joking, I can do that, literally all the curses, I'm letting you know that, right now."

Aziraphale is not entirely sure that Crowley can be cursed, or whether it would even do anything to him, but the sentiment is extremely touching.

He lets her have the last slice of cheesecake.

-

The Summer is longer and wetter than expected, edging into Autumn with a lazy sort of forgetfulness.

Crowley has taken to staying through the night with Aziraphale, to tangling them together in the sheets, until there's no doubt that the bed belongs to the both of them. While Aziraphale sleeps, Crowley sketches in the small notebook that Aziraphale bought for him, or he reads something from his collection, or tries the delicate pastries, or the many cakes, that Aziraphale is learning how to make in his thoroughly inadequate kitchen. The demon giving his, often unhelpful, opinions on the last two. Though Aziraphale is a far better cook than Crowley, who has a unique sense of flavour and enjoys experimenting rather too much. 

Thanks to Crowley there are also now potted plants scattered throughout the bookshop. Aziraphale is fascinated by them, but is forbidden from touching them, lest they immediately wither and die. Aziraphale protested that it was only one plant and it was a very long time ago, he almost regrets even sharing the story. But Crowley has decided, if only for his own amusement, that Aziraphale is hopeless when it comes to plants and his touch will spell their doom.

Aziraphale is too pleased to have something of Crowley's around him to care.

And sometimes there are nights where they play like lovers do, where Aziraphale opens his eyes to find Crowley has crawled naked into his lap, intent on reading to him, often positively scandalous chapters from a book pulled from his more indecent collection. No matter how well Aziraphale hides them, or how many times he protests that they have not weathered the gradual change of language well, no matter how many times he's laughingly insisted the next morning that he won't be able to take anything the demon says seriously. Though Crowley always wins in the end. This sharp-tongued, red-headed fiend who owns his heart.

Aziraphale is simply happy that the demon is here with him, as close to his own as makes no difference.

Crowley had snuck Fanny Hill into their bedroom tonight, Aziraphale's not entirely sure how, but he'd been too amused to call him on it, or at least replace it with something slightly more well-written. He simply sets his own book on Norman castles down next to it, and takes off his glasses to sleep.

Much later, after full dark has pulled in, there's a sound that nudges at his awareness, rushing and repetitive. It takes him a second to realise that it's raining outside, a great tear of it that suggests it's not stopping any time soon. Aziraphale isn't sure if it woke him or not. He knows it's a true waking, because his feet twitch in the sheets, arm stretching across to the other side of the bed, for a body that will never be there. He sighs, rolls onto his back, and murmurs something, he's uncertain what, but it leaves the bedroom feeling warm and close, comforting.

The world cuts away again, briefly, like someone had sliced through a stretch of film, set together two pieces that had originally been far apart. The next time he wakes he can't move, he's a relaxed weight of softness against the mattress, and there's a long hand pressed to his cheek, a familiar spread of warm, naked skin over his hips. He indulges in it for a long moment. He pretends that he can hum a protest at being woken, that he can reach up for the slender waist he knows is above him, grip it and pull, demand a kiss.

"Open your eyes, angel."

Aziraphale blinks his eyes open obediently.

Crowley is seated in his lap, naked and impatient, expression something that clearly intends nothing but trouble. His long hair is spread around them both on the bed, like it had fallen from above in great looping piles, gathering in Crowley's elbows and the curve of his neck. He's so lovely, and Aziraphale wants to touch him so badly it's almost a physical pain.

Instead of drawing Aziraphale's hands to him, letting him feel Crowley's chest, waist, and thighs beneath them, the demon lifts the book he'd clearly taken from beside the bed while Aziraphale was sleeping, he spreads it open and starts to read.

It's frustrating and unbearable, and Aziraphale loves every second of it. Which Crowley knows him well enough to be able to tell. He knows that Aziraphale loves his voice, his laugh, the way his mouth moves when he reads, the way his hair twists and coils and tugs gently at Aziraphale's limbs, as if it always wants to be touching him instead. Aziraphale would laugh if he could. But instead he feels his body flush, feels it thrum with lust and adoration as Crowley's long, sharp-nailed hand drops to touch his thigh, his stomach, the high curve where ribs become chest. A slender thumb rubs across his nipple with a murmur of accusation, as Crowley briefly feigns that he'd lost his place.

Until Aziraphale is completely, helplessly erect beneath the demon's slight buttocks.

Aziraphale does his absolute best to make his next exhale a moan, but instead it's simply a soft puff of air. He feels rumpled and undone, red-faced and eager, and the demon has done almost nothing.

There's a long finger drawing tickly-slow down the length of his nose, as Crowley flicks onwards in the book with his other hand, then gives an amused half-laugh at what he finds on the next page. What he likely already knows perfectly well is on the next page.

"My goodness, Mr Fell! No wonder you can't sleep with such bedside reads!"

Aziraphale wants to point out that it's Crowley's book, not his. That the wicked fiend left it there to tease him. The demon still laughs his hot, smoky laugh, uses a thumb to nudge between the pages, skips ahead, and somehow finds the most ridiculously salacious passages that he can. Aziraphale is so utterly full of love for him that it throbs through every inch of his skin, especially the places where there's a stretch of strong thigh, or a twisting drift of auburn hair. 

Eventually Crowley laughs and sets the book down, says his name in a low, rumbling tone of voice that feels wanton and greedy. He reaches down with a hand that's suddenly slick, takes pity on him, working Aziraphale's erection between his fingers, leaving it to glisten in their grip. Before Crowley rises on his knees and dips his long fingers under himself, working his body open with quick pushes. Aziraphale can feel the blood flush to his skin, can feel the prickle of Crowley's long hair as it curls in arousal, and he can do nothing but want, desperately and terribly.

He knows they don't have much time tonight, Crowley has already kept him awake so long.

The demon places a hand flat on his chest, the hot press of his palm and his slick fingers leave a smeared, shining handprint, that Aziraphale likes to think claims him as Crowley's. The other hand Crowley uses to lift and position Aziraphale's cock, before he angles his lovely, bony hips so that Aziraphale cock nudges at his hole, which stretches open for the push, and Crowley lets it smoothly fill him, as he sinks into Aziraphale's lap.

Aziraphale feels every moment of it, every exquisitely tight stretch of Crowley's body around him, the way he shivers with pleasure and adjusts to accept the length of him. He even feels the fluttery, satisfied sigh when his spine rolls, sending him deep. It's all a wash of sensation that thrills and frustrates him in equal measure. His body is always so desperate under the skin as he watches, as he can do nothing but watch. Until Crowley is seated fully on his cock, a bend of spine and flat planes, peaked nipples and narrow waist, long, flexing thighs. Aziraphale is so overwhelmed by arousal that he can feel himself pressing dangerously close to the edge already. He can feel the way he throbs and jerks inside him, almost desperately. Crowley is hard too, has been for a while, the long, slender shape of it rising from his body, bouncing against the jump and pull of his stomach as he rocks. It's all so impossibly arousing. 

Aziraphale is not going to last tonight, and there's no way to tell him.

No way to make him slow down.

No way to grasp his hips and beg him to please wait.

Oh, this will be over so fast, and he wants it and he can't bear it. He's so desperately in love it feels like madness.

Crowley's whole body stretches on a moan, back moving in an impossible arch, the sharp thrust of his hips displaying the jutting, desperate redness of his cock above his tense balls, and lower, the barest glimpse of Aziraphale moving slickly within him.

The last of which is too much, his orgasm snags hard and deep, drags him over, and it feels like something blooming inside him, stretching his skin to breaking point, even as the rest of his body stays limp and still, he can feel the warm pulses of his come -

Crowley stops, gives a sharp, breathless sound of apology. 

"I'm sorry, angel, I got a little greedy there. I should have slowed down." He soothes Aziraphale's burning skin with his hands, makes a soft sound of loss when Aziraphale softens and slips free of him. Aziraphale feels the slow spill of fluid into his pubic hair, the tickly slide of it over his balls and something in that is unbearably erotic, so much that he wishes his body would let him harden again.

Crowley shifts down a touch, curls a hand around himself, suddenly wet with lubricant, he works himself in quick, slippery pulls. Every so often his long thumb will slide over the head of his cock, and leave it shiny wet. As tempting a picture as Aziraphale has ever seen.

"Much as I would like to make love to you in turn - ah - my control isn't absolute. I've already held you nearly twenty nine minutes. I would hold you longer if I -" His hand speeds up, hair spilling like liquid across Aziraphale's body as his hips work to push him through his own fist. "I would keep you here, spread and beautiful. My beautiful angel."

He stops, and Aziraphale watches Crowley come in wet, broken lines over the curve of his stomach, and the soft curl of his damp, sticky cock.

After the shivers subside, Crowley slowly sinks into Aziraphale's body, holding him with splayed open hands and breathing hard into his neck, kissing the jump of his pulse. Aziraphale will ask him tomorrow if perhaps sometimes he'll curl one of his arms around Crowley's back, so he can feel like he's holding him, so he can -

"I love you," Crowley says quietly. It's the very first time he's said it, and Aziraphale feels suddenly and strangely weightless. But Crowley stiffens once the words are free, as if he never intended to say them, knows he can't take them back, or pretend it's not true. Eventually, he relaxes, sighs in a way that's long and helpless. His face turns against the soft muscle of Aziraphale's chest. "I love you so much, angel, and you deserve so much better than this." Something in his voice sounds suddenly pained, and guilty, as if the thing that hurts them both is his fault.

It's been too long, Crowley doesn't have the strength to hold them any longer.

The world jolts -

Aziraphale's left panting, pushing himself upright in the sheets, the book still left splayed open, the spine broken.

"Crowley -" Aziraphale can't bear the memory of how lost Crowley had felt at the end. The lack of his presence atop him, or beside him, the impossibility of giving him comfort, is sharp and ever-present. "I love you too, Crowley. You know that I do. I love you and I don't care. You foolish demon."

But the shelves are cold and silent.

-

The bookshop remains distressingly empty as the days drag on. No matter how many times Aziraphale pleads with the silent stacks, no matter how many times he offers to read Crowley his favourite books. No matter how many glasses of wine he pours, and then leaves to collect dust. He doesn't understand what happened. Things had been perfect - they'd been as perfect as they were ever going to be between the two of them.

He refuses to accept that Crowley is gone. Even as days turns into weeks, even as weeks group into a month and Autumn turns windy and cold.

Eventually the pain building behind his refusal to believe it overwhelms the wall Aziraphale has built. He breaks down in the backroom, staring at a copy of A Midsummer Night's Dream, after drinking far too much wine. It feels like everything inside him is burning.

Crowley is gone, and he's not coming back.

-

It's been fifty seven days. Aziraphale doesn't want to keep counting but something in his head does it all the same. He's almost spent half as long without Crowley as he spent with him, and the thought devastates him. As if the days stacking up after the loss of him were in some way a punishment he had to endure. Though Aziraphale doesn't know of anything he could possibly have done to merit the quiet despair that's overtaken his life.

Some days he doesn't open the shop at all, and he can't bring himself to move a single one of the dead plants.

He drinks too much.

He'd told Anathema that he and Crowley had separated, he'd had to tell her something, since his despair had been obvious and messy for a few, long, painful weeks. Though he couldn't bear to tell her that he'd disappeared in the night, leaving nothing to explain himself. He didn't want her to think badly of him. Aziraphale cannot- cannot think badly of him.

The bookshop smells wrong. Aziraphale is exhausted, though he sleeps more deeply than he ever has. It feels less like a rejuvenation and more like a desperate search for unconsciousness. He always wakes with a start, reaching out, moving before he's aware of it. Hating how alive he feels in the bed, hating how his legs twitch and his hands scratch at the sheets. He hates the way he rolls from one side of the empty bed to the other. He hates that he's free to move. Because it means he's alone.

He's completely and utterly alone.

\- 

He still has the bookshop. Which he's been slowly continuing to acquire stock for, for want of anything else to do. The smell of new varnish has finally faded, and the gaps in the shelves have been filled with books. He's survived here alone before. He supposes he can do it again. He just has to remember how.

The bell jingles, but Aziraphale is in no mood for customers. He doesn't look over as he reaches up to the shelf, slotting Shakespeare back where he belongs.

"I'm afraid we're just closing. You'll have to come back tomorrow if you want something," he tells them. Though in his experience, they rarely do.

"Aziraphale."

The voice doesn't quite sound real for a moment, familiar and painful and frankly impossible. A book pauses halfway shelved as he turns awkwardly to view the door.

There's a narrow shape in the doorway. A skinny figure dressed all in black, long hands shoved into the front pockets of his tight jeans. He's wearing sunglasses large enough to hide his eyes from any curious onlookers, and his hair is a shockingly short fin of rust-red on his head. He looks remarkably like Crowley, and it's enough to leave every part of Aziraphale aching in misery for the long seconds it takes him to realise -

The copy of Hamlet he was holding slips from his fingers and hits the ground, a fluttering _'crump'_ of pages that would normally have him swearing and carefully retrieving it, smoothing it back into order.

He leaves it there.

The figure who is not Crowley, could not possibly be Crowley because the world would not give him Crowley. Not like this. Not at four o'clock in the afternoon, standing ten feet away and wearing shockingly modern clothes, watching Aziraphale as if he's terrified to come close to him. It cannot be Crowley because Aziraphale is awake and out of his bed, and moving. He takes two steps forward to prove it, and the figure makes a noise in his throat that Aziraphale still hears in his sleep.

"Angel." There is a twist of mouth, and Aziraphale knows it, has watched it so many times, desperate to trace the shape of it with his fingers.

_Please, God, please be real._

Aziraphale leaves the books he'd carefully stacked to slide and fall, as he knocks his way past them and makes for the door. The figure sways towards him, as if helpless to do anything else. Aziraphale meets him halfway, reaches up and pulls at the bridge of the sunglasses, drags them free. Behind them he finds eyes that he knows better than his own. But that he's never once seen in daylight. They are _beautiful_. He drops the glasses on the floor, and puts a hand on Crowley's face, feels the sharply angled cheek, and the narrow jaw, the unnatural warmth of him, for the _very first time_. He feels the way Crowley's face shudders and quietly collapses at the touch.

Before he can understand anything, Aziraphale is kissing him.

He's pulling Crowley's long, warm body in as tight as he's physically capable. Mouth pressed hard against his, before they open against each other, a fierce, wet crush of mouths, and Crowley is kissing him back, with messy, hurried pushes that seem more eager than skilled, and it occurs to Aziraphale that this is Crowley's first kiss. His first real kiss. Which pulls a sob out of his throat and forces him to lean away.

"How are you -?" No, that's not important, not what he wants to say. "I thought you _left me_ ," he says instead. It comes out raw and devastated, something he's been holding in lest he shatter into pieces. His entire throat hurts.

Crowley hitches a breath, as if Aziraphale speaking to him was already too much, eyes moving over his face, to watch it in motion up close, hands on his skin, thumb rubbing at the shifting corner of his mouth. Everything is too much, and Aziraphale feels like he might break apart.

" _Never_ ," Crowley tells him. "Never, angel, I left -" He stops, as if admitting it out loud is unbearable. "I love you more than anything, and I wanted us to be real, I needed us to be real. I couldn't condemn you to a life lived in _minutes_ with me. You didn't deserve that, and I wanted you to touch me back. You have no idea how much I wanted you to touch me back. Every time, always."

Aziraphale presses both hands to the sides of Crowley's face, thumbs drifting on his heated skin, he nods rather than reply to that, not sure that he can. Because part of him still doesn't believe that it's actually happening.

_I would have lived minutes at a time with you._

"Your beautiful hair," he says instead, fingers touching where it's barely a few inches long, save the untidy stretch of it on top. He knows how proud Crowley had been of it, but it wasn't just that, the hair had been alive, the hair had been part of him, it had _been him_ somehow, in some way, Aziraphale was sure of it. And now it was gone, so much of it, just gone. "What happened?"

Crowley inhales deeply at the words, and something quietly devastated moves over his face, before he forces it away and breathes a sigh.

"I had to give something," he says simply. "They wouldn't take less, not to let me - to let me be something else." Crowley draws him in again, touches him with his long, warm hands. Aziraphale drops his own to Crowley's waist, finds he can't stop them sliding upwards, gripping, pulling. He can feel the slight weight of him through the unfamiliar clothes, the movement of his ribs when he breathes, God, he can feel the shape of Crowley beneath his hands. He pulls him in close and kisses him, like he's always wanted to, and Crowley doesn't resist, he lets Aziraphale have everything he wants. His fingers tangle in the back of Aziraphale's rumpled shirt, and there's a whine in his throat. 

Eventually Aziraphale has to breathe, has to look at Crowley's face again, has to see him, just because he can. 

" _Crowley_." 

"Touch me, please, just touch me, Aziraphale, please, it's all I ever wanted -"

Aziraphale crushes the words back into his mouth, gathers him into his body, folds his arms around him and holds him, tight enough that he might squeeze the breath from him. He pushes his fingers into the fine, cool strands of his hair, so much shorter now, but no less silky and delightful. He'd spent so long wanting to touch it, so long with it always within reach, but impossible.

Crowley shudders and sinks into him, as if he's falling, tucks his face into Aziraphale's neck.

They stay that way for a very long time. Until Aziraphale needs to sit lest his knees give out. He tugs Crowley towards the sofa where the demon immediately kicks his boots off and curls against him. Aziraphale digs a hand into his hair and doesn't let go. The other he rubs gently up and down Crowley's arm, which leaves him shivering, making cracked noises in his throat that sound overwhelmed. Aziraphale is not sure he can stop touching him - not sure he can bear to stop touching him. He hadn't thought he could possibly love him any more. But he feels so full of it that it hurts.

Crowley looks tired, he looks worn out, as if this impossible thing had taken something more than his hair from him. It's not the only difference either, now Aziraphale has a good look at him in the daylight - _in the daylight_ \- there's a tattoo now, in front of his ear, the curling twist of a serpent in dark ink. 

Aziraphale drags his thumb over it and Crowley shivers.

"I'm sorry I was gone for so long," he says thickly. He's still speaking so fast, instinctively trying not to waste their minutes together, and something in Aziraphale aches all the way through. "I didn't mean it to be so long."

"I forgive you," Aziraphale reassures him, and if his voice is unsteady no one will judge him for it. "Of course I forgive you."

Crowley makes a breathless noise of surprise, as if he's still not expecting an immediate reply, doesn't know what to do with it. Aziraphale rubs his arm again, feeling the slender muscle beneath his fingers, the hard curve of his elbow, pieces of Crowley that are new and impossibly precious.

"How could I not when you came to my door? When I get to kiss you, when I can hold you like this -" He sighs air rather than risk sobbing like a fool. "I just wish you had told me why," he presses on, like he has to share the hurt to drain it. "I worried so much Crowley. I wasn't sure which hurt more, the thought that you had left me, or that something awful had happened to you."

Crowley's face, for a moment, is wretched, and guilty. Aziraphale lifts a hand and does what he's wanted to do so many times, he lays it against Crowley's face, smooths the expression away. The demon sighs into the curve of his hand.

"I know, I know and I'm sorry, I wasn't certain if I could get what I needed. If it would even be allowed, demons don't get to change their nature, Aziraphale. They don't get to be something else, to move between circles, and I didn't want you to hope, just in case. I never meant to be gone so long. I'm so sorry it took me so long." Crowley kisses the curve of his cheek, the hard line of his jaw, the bend of his neck. Aziraphale feels half undone already, he _adores_ him, and he would have lived with anything to keep him. "I was afraid that you wouldn't want me any more," Crowley confesses quietly. "I was gone so long, and I didn't know if you'd wait for me. If you'd still love me."

_More than anything else in the world._

"I'm afraid you rather ruined me for anyone else, my love," Aziraphale confesses, which is the absolute truth. "You're mine until you say otherwise." Which is more the truth, and rather selfish, but he doesn't much care. Neither does Crowley, if the way he chokes air and tucks into him is to be believed. "Crowley, I didn't think we would ever -"

"I know," Crowley says fiercely, then breathes startled laughter at the fact that he'd interrupted him, before leaning in and kissing him as if to prove that he can, or to reassure himself that he can. Aziraphale tightens a hand in his hair, and kisses him back. Which ensures that it goes on for a while. 

Until Crowley finally pulls back to look at him. 

"Seeing you move, being able to touch you like this, having you touch me -" He catches Aziraphale's hand, raises it to his mouth, and Aziraphale exhales laughter and presses his fingers there, listens to the sound Crowley makes, and wants to keep it forever. "I've never had this before - I'm not sure I can get used to this. I'm not sure there's enough time in the world."

Aziraphale lets Crowley tangle their fingers together, staring at the way they slide and squeeze against each other. This time Aziraphale can squeeze back.

"We have the time now," Aziraphale reminds him, feels Crowley go still, feels him realise that he won't have to _leave_ now. He looks overwhelmed, and a little broken. Aziraphale draws him in, holds him against his chest, and gently strokes his hair, until the last of the sun disappears past the window.

They should start this properly, Aziraphale decides. Everything is new after all.

"Would you like some wine, darling?" he asks quietly. 

Crowley makes a surprised noise, then gives a small laugh.

"I would love to have a drink with you, angel." 

Aziraphale makes himself get up and fetch a bottle from the desk. He uncorks it while Crowley watches him, while he fidgets and twitches, as if he wants to drag him back within reach. The much shorter hair makes him look sharper, more real somehow and less like a phantom. Aziraphale thinks he could get used to it. 

He takes a deep breath.

"I made a new list of book recommendations for you, while you were gone - just in case." He'd made several, screwing them up and throwing them away when he couldn't face looking at them any more. But the last one he'd kept, left in a drawer. "I think you'll like it. Some of them even have car chases in them. You could read them, or - or I could read them to you?" Aziraphale watches Crowley's face, watches him realise what they can have now, all the things they can do now, what they can be to each other. "You could tell me your thoughts?"

Crowley's throat rolls in a swallow, he tries to speak, discovers that he can't and just nods, wordlessly.

Aziraphale pours two glasses of wine.

They drink together.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Be Still, My Love, Be Still by entanglednow](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25507429) by [Arcafira](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arcafira/pseuds/Arcafira)




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